PRAYERS BEFORE COUNCIL MEETINGS JUST HAD TO GO

Christian practice is out of its time and a bit of an embarrassment

The water tower in Ste-Anne-deBellevue is a bit like the Christian prayer we used to recite before town meetings back in the 1980s. It’s out of its time and it, too, has to be ‘repurposed’. In fact, it’s a bit of an embarrassment.

Come to think of it, maybe that prayer survived as late as the 1990s. And that is only 20 years ago, so quickly our demography and culture change.

And it’s surprising, isn’t it, that there wasn’t more of a fuss when the Christian prayer was dropped for something more humanist? (Something like: “Let’s hope we all keep our cool for this meeting and make a few reasonable decisions that don’t hurt anyone.”) No one complained to me, the mayor who requested the change, not even the councillors who were practising Catholics. The response was a resounding one-minute silence during which you could think whatever you wanted to. A perfectly secular response.

Jacques Turgeon, our debonair town clerk when I became mayor in 1994, wrote out some comforting words of encouragement and hope that quickly morphed into becoming a minute of silence to encourage the council and its assembled crowd of residents (maybe 10 people) to compose themselves into a respectful official formal monthly meeting.

You have to draw a line between what is social chatter and regular neighbourly abuse and official decision-making time. The prayer reminded people that it was a bit like church, requiring a similar solemnity. Or, like municipal courts with judges. You don’t say insulting things to municipal judges, my lord, do you? Similarly, council meetings are formal occasions when laws are made and modified. People forget, or just plain don’t know, that it’s not improv theatre even when your council is obviously doing a lot of improvising. Decisions are being made affecting your most immediate environment. It’s not a playoff game. Normally beer isn’t served, although that would no doubt improve many council meetings.

So back to the water tower, which is (I hope) still swaying up there above the village. One reader fondly remembers the ’50s, when she and her brother used to compete to be the first to see the water tower in the distance when coming out from LaSalle to visit their grandfather’s recently built log house on Île-Perrot, which was cottage country back in 1954. Happy days! And I still get a little leap when I see on the highway, the tower come into view.

Another reader wonders why the city does not take advantage of the tower and make it a welcoming site just like the boardwalk. Answer? $100,000+. And another reader writes that “the dilapidated look reflects on all of us, not just Ste-Anne-deBellevue. It sends exactly the wrong signal to everyone coming here and is embarrassing …. I have yet to see any town, anywhere in North America, that has such a structure in a prominent gateway location like this.”

Pretty clear judgment. This is a regional problem and should be handled by the regional government whose image is being tarnished.

So the water tower is obsolete like the prayer, but, unfortunately, you can’t just turn it into a minute’s silence. There’s a lot of concrete involved.

But you can easily solve your prayer problem: the answer is called silence. You let people think whatever they want. Like a Quaker meeting.

It’s naive of the traditionalist Saguenay mayor, Jean Tremblay, to think that people at a town meeting can just pay no attention while the old Catholic prayer is being recited. The prayer is impregnated with exclusive Christian belief. And in a similar way, it’s naive to claim that the crucifix in the National Assembly is a part of some secular national heritage and not a visual declaration of faith. Or, at the very least, an affirmation of the good Christian stock from whom we are descended. The crucifix is necessarily charged with its powerful historical ideology: it is not just some inert historical detail.

Similarly the crucifix in the Montreal town hall, where our demerged mayors meet monthly to be informed of Montreal agglomeration business, is another prominent political symbol of our origins. It must be a bit of an embarrassment for non-believers.

But look up! There’s that huge cross up on the mountain. Don’t panic: it could be worse. It could be Mickey Mouse. And imagine how you’d feel if there were a huge cross planted on top of the Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue water tower to remind us of our heritage.

We should be thankful for small mercies.