Montréal

Labor Day was low-key this year. We had a quiet day and a small cookout in the courtyard during the afternoon. But later in the week, the novice master decided to give the three of us a little break from all the activity in the house and the noise of the city, so we went up to Montreal for a couple of days and stopped at the beach on Lake Champlain on the way there and back.

Multi-day trips during novitiate are exceptional, but because there is an Oblate house there the provincial can designate it as the novitiate residence for a certain period of time, allowing us to have a get away without loosing any of the 365 days required for novitiate.

Nice, windy Lake Champlain: much cooler than Boston this week.

Paul getting ready to jump off a bridge into the lake

Hanging out with Fr. Shawn's father and brother at the beach

The Oblate house in Montreal, right on the bank of the St. Lawrence "Fleuve"

Morning view from the porch

Outside Notre Dame du Montreal, a ~0.25 scale replica of Notre Dame du Paris

Interior

The main altarpiece 

7,000-pipe organ

We also visited St. Joseph's Oratory, which I had been to on my last visit two years ago.

It was good to get out of the city during the heat wave and go somewhere a little cooler and less humid, but most of all to get away from the noise and activity for a few days. We didn't do very many activities or see many sights outside of our pilgrimage to the Oratory shrine, and we were able to spend a lot of extra time reading in addition to our normal novitiate routine.