This is the first image from my December 2022 trip to Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce) and Bas-Saint-Laurent, south and east of Québec City, Canada. Despite some challenging weather on the eve of and on my first day in Québec, and getting COVID on my last day in Québec City (after avoiding it for almost three years!), it was a very successful and productive trip. I only got one blue sky day and got weather from snow storms to fog and everything in between. I lived in Montreal when I was a kid, between grades six and nine, but I hadn’t been back in a long time and had rarely spent time in the rural areas, so the destination was almost completely new to me. My very rusty French held up and I really enjoyed the variety of subjects – from barns and rural scenes to croix de chemin (roadside crosses) – I got to photograph. I hope you enjoy the results.
I have called this picture 'Garmbrel' because I think that's the name for this shape of barn, but maybe someone can correct me.
Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce), Québec, Canada.
I wrote a blog post about this trip. If you'd like to see some behind the scene shots, video and read some stories about how I shot these images, take a look.
If you'd like to see the rest of the images from this trip, take a look at my Québec album and if you'd like to see the series within the series - the croix de chemin - there's an album for them, as well.
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Tags: Beauce Canada Chaudière-Appalaches Quebec
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Dairy is the main agricultural industry in Bas-Saint-Laurent and there were lots of these white-wrapped bales and tall silos around to photograph. Bales like these will certainly make more appearances in coming images.
Bas-Saint-Laurent, Québec, Canada.
I wrote a blog post about my December 2022 photographic trip to the rural areas of Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce) and Bas-Saint-Laurent, south and east of Québec City. If you'd like to see some behind the scene shots, video and read some stories about how I shot these images, take a look.
If you'd like to see the rest of the images from this trip, take a look at my Québec album and if you'd like to see the series within the series - the croix de chemin - there's an album for them, as well.
Website | Blog | Instagram
Tags: Bas-Saint-Laurent Canada Quebec
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This image is one in a series of croix de chemin (roadside crosses) taken during my December 2022 photographic trip to Québec. There are between 2,500 and 3,000 croix de chemin scattered all over rural Québec, the historic centre of North American Catholicism. Despite the decrease in influence of the Catholic Church during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and the prediction that, as a result, croix de chemin would disappear from the rural landscape, recent surveys have shown that around 80% of the croix that were surveyed in the 70s and 80s are still standing. Croix de chemin are large (15 to 20 feet tall) crosses that where originally “erected to fulfill a vow, to sacralize the land, or to ward off calamities” (Kaell, p. 135). They hark back to the cross that Jacques Cartier erected on the Canadian mainland, in Gaspé, on July 24, 1534 on his first exploration trip of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but also represent their owners’ Catholic devotion and are examples of beautiful rural folk art. Croix de chemin are most often made of wood (though some more modern ones are made of metal) and are decorated with iconography of the Passion. Each year their caretakers try to repaint them and every 40 or 50 years they have to be replaced altogether. There are three main types of croix de chemin: (1) the simple croix de chemin which may have some decorative elements at the end or centre, (2) the croix de chemin featuring instruments of the Passion which are decorated with a lance, nails, hammer, whip, ladder, crown of thorns, and/or rooster and (3) the calvaire, which depicts the crucifixion scene.
The primary reason I wanted to photograph the croix de chemin was that they are wonderful pieces of folk art – made and maintained, sometimes for many decades, by local artisans, and are pretty much unique to Québec in Canada (although emigrants from Québec brought a few to Ontario and Manitoba in the 19th century). I spent many hours of scouting the locations of croix de chemin using the fantastic website Les Croix de Chemin au Québec and searching out and photographing them to create this series was a highlight of my recent trip. In the end, I photographed almost 40 croix de chemin to create this series.
Kaell, H. (2017) Marking memory: Heritage work and devotional labor at Québec’s croix de chemin. In K. Norget (Ed.), The Anthropology of Catholicism (pp. 122-138). University of California Press.
Joly, D. (2007). Wayside crosses. In Encyclopedia of French cultural heritage in North America. www.ameriquefrancaise.org/en/article-296/Wayside_Crosses.html
Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce), Québec, Canada.
I wrote a blog post about my December 2022 photographic trip to the rural areas of Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce) and Bas-Saint-Laurent, south and east of Québec City. If you'd like to see some behind the scene shots, video and read some stories about how I shot these images, take a look.
If you'd like to see the rest of the images from this trip, take a look at my Québec album and if you'd like to see the series within the series - the croix de chemin - there's an album for them, as well.
Website | Blog | Instagram
Tags: Beauce Calvaire Canada Chaudière-Appalaches Croix de chemin Quebec
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The day I landed in Quebec City there was a wind warning, and were they ever right! At times on that first day I could barely see to take a photograph, and it showed when I looked at them later. This image of a lovely barn in the blowing snow, though, I liked.
Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce), Québec, Canada.
I wrote a blog post about my December 2022 photographic trip to the rural areas of Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce) and Bas-Saint-Laurent, south and east of Québec City. If you'd like to see some behind the scene shots, video and read some stories about how I shot these images, take a look.
If you'd like to see the rest of the images from this trip, take a look at my Québec album and if you'd like to see the series within the series - the croix de chemin - there's an album for them, as well.
Website | Blog | Instagram
Tags: Canada Chaudière-Appalaches Quebec
© All Rights Reserved
Taken a few days after the previous image, this time in much less windy (but still windy) conditions.
Bas-Saint-Laurent, Quebec, Canada.
I wrote a blog post about my December 2022 photographic trip to the rural areas of Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce) and Bas-Saint-Laurent, south and east of Québec City. If you'd like to see some behind the scene shots, video and read some stories about how I shot these images, take a look.
If you'd like to see the rest of the images from this trip, take a look at my Québec album and if you'd like to see the series within the series - the croix de chemin - there's an album for them, as well.
Website | Blog | Instagram
Tags: Bas-Saint-Laurent Canada Quebec
© All Rights Reserved