ches, or more, to every one in the Province of Quebec. In all
Canada, rural and urban, there is probably not a Protestant parish to
which are attached as many, or perhaps half as many, people as the five
thousand who dwell in the parish of St. Etienne de la Malbaie, one of
secondary importance in the Province of Quebec. In a whole diocese there
are often not more than forty or fifty parishes. In the country the
churches are usually built at intervals of not more than three leagues
(nine miles) so that no one may have to travel more than a league and a
half to mass. The life of the people centres in the Church. In its
registers, kept with great accuracy, is to be found the chief record of
the village drama, the story of its births, marriages and deaths. True
to the tastes of old France the French Canadian has an amazing interest
in family history, and genealogies, based upon these ample records, are
closely studied. In the olden days the habitant brought his savings to
be kept in the Church's strong chest. The church edifice, its pictures
and its other furnishings, are things in which to take pride. Each
village aspires to have its own chime of bells. To chronicle baptisms,
marriages, burials, anniversaries, the chimes are rung for a longer or
shorter time according to the fee paid. Every day one hears them often
and a considerable revenue must come from this source. Whatever the
habitant knows of art, painting, sculpture, music, he learns from the
Church and it is all associated with religious hopes and fears.
"Dwellers in cities," says a French Canadian writer, "have concerts,
theatres, museums; in the rural communities it is the Church that
provides all this. During her services the most fervent among the
faithful taste by anticipation the joys of heaven and murmur, enchanted:
'Since here all is so beautiful in the house of the Lord how much more
so will it be in his paradise!'"[30]

Thus it happens that here the parish and its church have a significance
not felt where, as now in practically all English speaking countries,
each community represents a variety of religious beliefs. At Malbaie, as
in dozens of other parishes, there is not, except in summer, a single
Protestant. So strong is the pressure of religious and social opinion,
that even persons with no belief in Christianity are constrained to join
outwardly at least in the church services. In the villages, at least,
nearly every one confesses and partakes of the