In 2012 and 2013 I had a little more time to drive around the city and look for a few other things that had escaped me (they must have heard that I was coming) in 2011. There's a considerable amount to see out at the north end of the city that has not yet received our attention.

So start as we mean to go on, Eric. What's that down there? Or more to the point, what are those down there? Because there seem to be two of them.

The first one is a 1950 Chrysler New Yorker. From the quick glance that I was able to give it, it seems that someone has made a start on preparing the bodywork but very quickly lost interest before having gone too far.

And that's just as well, because the kind of old car that I would be interested in would be in what the French call dans son jus - sold "as is" before anyone has had an opportunity to botch it or to hide or disguise any faults.

But this second one is much more like it. It's a 1941 Packard I think, fitted with a Henney body and it's the nicest vehicle that I have ever seen.

On the side of the bonnet is written in chrome trim the word "Amerial" or "Imperial" or something like that. Packard didn't make an "Imperial" and I've not been able to find out too much about Henney except that the company made bodies for funeral vehicles, although my very useful Illustrated Encyclopedia of Automobiles does tell me that Henney did in fact produce a few vehicles of its own in the 1920s.

If you know any more about this vehicle, please ..

Don't be misled into thinking that it's a hearse because it isn't. It carries a coffin but there is no body inside it, just a hundred bottles of illicit hooch. And the pall-bearers don't carry flowers but machine guns. It's exactly the kind of vehicle in which Al Capone would have gone to work.

That's exactly what I told the owners and I would have had the Packard over into Europe in a heartbeat, except for one thing. They are both sold, to someone in France as it happens, and they will be shipped out some time towards the end of the year. And isn't that a crying shame?

Still, it does remind me of the advert that I saw in one of these Classic Car magazines a good while ago -
"1976 Ford Granada Hearse for sale. Very original. Body in good condition."

A building that I had missed in 2011 was the Seminary of St Joseph in the Rue Laviolette. It's such a large building that to try to find a viewpoint where I could fit it all into the shot was almost impossible. This will have to do for now.

The Seminary was founded in 1860. And while this might be the original building, it is a long way from being in its original condition.

You might of course be wondering as to the reason for the changes but the further you drive around Canada with me, the more you will encounter the results of that major cause of destruction and damage to Canada's heritage. In 1929, whilst they were carrying out building work and enlarging the premises, the building was badly damaged by fire.

What you see here today in these two photos (this second one was taken from a different viewpoint in 2013) are the results of the subsequent reconstruction.

You might not think so, but the material used in the construction of the building is actually chalk. Quite handy if the teacher runs out of the stuff in the middle of a lesson. You will have already guessed from the green tint that the roofing is sheathed in copper.

Where I took the 2012 photo was from a parking space in the Rue Sainte Julie just outside the hospital, and I was glad I found this spot because on the other side of the road from me was this …errr… well, I suppose it is a statue.

Following the financial collapse of 2010, public spending has been the subject of vicious cutbacks as we all know, and the Health Service has been one of the victims. I am however quite optimistic that once the world returns to normality and budgets are restored, the hospital will be able to afford to buy the rest of the statue.

When I was here in the Province of Quebec a couple of years ago, I expressed a great deal of astonishment when I saw my first-ever football pitch. We aren't talking gridiron of course but real football, where everyone actually gets to kick the ball.

Since then, I've been keeping my eye open for other football pitches, and while you might think that this looks very much like a gridiron field, there are some full-size football goals over there on the touchline.

I'm not quite sure how this counts as a football pitch because the goals are on wheels and so they can be moved out of the way when someone has a shot at goal.

This is nothing new, of course. There was a pair of these at Old Trafford when Manure Knighted was the manager, and when he retired he took the remote control with him, much to the chagrin of David Moyes.

In the background of course is the Seminary of St Joseph with its green copper dome.

Here on the edge of town I don't find darkness (although with the weather that we were having I wouldn't have been surprised) but instead the Franciscan priory and the Musée Père Frédéric - "Father Frederic's Museum"

Now here's an enigmatic character if ever there was one - Father Frederic Jansoone. He was born in 1838 in Ghyvelde, in what was known in those days as "French Flanders" and was described by one author as "the eighth and youngest of the thirteen children ... " of his parents (and I'm still trying to work that out).

Although having trained for the priesthood as a youth, he left his calling and became a textile salesman. Even his own biographer described him as having "soon realized (sic) that he had a talent for selling". He returned to his studies on the death of his mother and eventually entered a friary in Bordeaux but finding the life there too constraining, he retrained as a religious speaker and left for Palestine. There, he helped reorganise inter-denominational relations but also acted as a guide to religious parties visiting the Holy Sites there, where "his knowledge and skill in presentation", to quote one author, drew him to the attention of a group of Catholic dignitaries from Québec.

Invited to Canada in 1881, he was sent on a lecture tour around Québec to help revitalise the faith but although he managed to attract large crowds and to fire them with enthusiasm, he was expelled for having made a series of speeches that the authorities found to be "confrontational" (Franciscan missionaries, of which Jansoone was one, had been forbidden following the English take-over of the Province).

He returned to Québec in June 1888, having given an undertaking to leave politics out of his speeches, and was charged by the Bishop of Trois Rivières, Louis-François Laflèche (he of the statue outside the Cathedral), to go on a fundraising drive for the church and to promote the shrines of Notre-Dame-du-Cap, Sainte-Ann-de-Beaupré and Cap-de la-Madeleine, interest in which had been flagging.

It was very shortly after this that Jansoone witnessed a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary at Cap-de-la-Madeleine open its eyes.
"A miracle!" proclaimed Father Jansoone, and the success of the shrine was assured.

So, incidentally, was the fame of Father Jansoone. He died in 1916 and in 1927 he was proposed for canonisation. On 25th September, or 25th October (depending upon which book you read) 1988 he was beatified and since then has been known as the Blessed Father Frédéric.

He is interred in the Chapelle de St Antoine, the Chapel of St Anthony, just to the right of the photograph.

That's not the best part of it, though.

There is a story about the Blessed Father Frédéric that has some kind of widespread circulation, and if it doesn't, I shall do my best to circulate it widely.

It is a fact that in order to be canonised, a person needs to have performed a certain number of miracles, and it seems that the Blessed Father Frédéric is one short of his tally. Consequently, all of his adepts in Canada are frantically scratching around to attribute one more miracle to him - to such an extent that when a good friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer, all of her pals in the Canadian chapter of the Opus Deii (my friend was rather naive) desperately started to pray to the Blessed Father Frédéric that his spirit might perform a miracle for her, in order to reach the required number.

Unfortunately this earnest supplication failed to have the desired result and my friend sadly passed away (something which tells you everything that you need to know about the Blessed Father Frédéric if even the Opus Deii, with all of their power in the upper echelons of the temporal world cannot exert enough influence in the spiritual world to persuade their hero to perform a miracle on demand).

This left the Canadian chapter of the Opus Deii still one miracle short of the required number, and so it was back to the drawing board as far as they are concerned.

However their problem, and that of the canonisation of the Blessed Father Frédéric, can be solved in an instant if they take note of the story that I am about to tell you.

It concerns the Blessed Father Frédéric and a voyage that he had made to Lourdes. On his return to Canada he was passing through the Customs shed at Montreal harbour when he was intercepted by a Customs official
"What is that liquid in those two bottles that you are carrying?" asked the official
"Holy water from the fountain of Mother Mary at Lourdes" replied the Blessed Father Frédéric.
And so the Customs official opened one of the bottles and had a quick sniff. "No it isn't!", he shouted. "It's brandy!"
"Holy Mother Mary!" exclaimed the Blessed Father Frédéric. "Another miracle!"

This church is right next to the Franciscan priory and it's a typical Québecois twin-tower design of church, inspired of course by the Basilique de Notre Dame in Montreal, although I struggle to see the similarity.

The church is called the Notre Dame des Sept Allégresses or crudely translated by Yours Truly - "Our Lady of the Seven Elations", and if you are wondering what the Seven Elations are, because I know that I was and so I went away to find out, they are -

1. The Annonciation
2. The Nativity
3. The Adoration of the Magi
4. The Resurrection
5. The Ascension
6. Pentecost
7. The Assumption

Strangely, the Crucifixion is not included, and that puzzles me. Most good Christians, and many of the bad ones too, hold the Crucifixion as on an equal par with the Nativity, firm in the belief and full of gratitude that Jesus died to save them from their sins. But then again, when did Jesus have anything to do with Catholicism and the Cult of Mary?

As an aside, talking about the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi, why wasn't Jesus born in the USA? The answer to that is that they couldn't find a Virgin and Three Wise Men.

But back to our story. A close look at the door of the church reveals this notice that quotes from the Book of Mark Chapter 6 Verse 31
"Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest awhile"
And so when I decide to come apart and rest awhile, what do I find? Yes, the church is all closed and locked up.

No, you can't make up stuff like this. As I have said before ... "and you'll say again" - ed ... all of this fancy stuff that the church preaches is just window-dressing. It's high time that the Church started to practise what it preaches.

And not only that, the Blessed Father Frédéric Janssoone Museum, the Salle Père Frédéric, the Church of the Seven Allegresses and the Franciscan complex here on the same site, in fact every door that I tried, the whole pace is all closed and locked up and there isn't a person (silly me - I almost said "a soul") about. So what if people feel an urgent need to come to the church to pray? That's what the churches are supposed to be here for.

And don't forget - it's street market weekend too. The streets are thronging with hordes of people. What happenes if one of these people wants to pray to God? Or even visit the museum?

It's totally astonishing. With all of the religious institutions on the site, you would have thought that they would have been able to find more-than-enough volunteers to provide a rota system to guard the Communion silver on a 24-hour basis, if that's what they are worried about.

Although why they should have Communion silver anyway when they are told
"give all thou hast to the poor" or
"it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for him to enter the Kingdom of Heaven" is totally beyond me. What has the nature of the platter to do with the symbolism of the sacrament anyway? It's still just as valid taken off a paper plate or out of a paper cup. Or maybe Jesus only works office hours. I think we should be told.

And don't scoff at that idea either. When my friend (whom I briefly mentioned above) was dying, I phoned her church for a priest.
"But it's 11 o'clock at night" he protested
"I'm sorry" I replied "but I didn't realise that God kept office hours."
And, as you were probably expecting, the priest never showed up.

Wasn't it St Paul who said something like "be not afraid to entertain strangers, for thereby, some have entertained angels unawares"?

Before I left this area, I had a quick glance at the shopping centre just a little way down the road from here. First thing that I noticed, and that I'll remember for the next time that I'm here, is that there's a Salvation Army second-hand shop.

When I'm on my travels around, I'm always on the look-out for decent second-hand books and music, and there's always something to be found in places like these.

Next stop is to find the railway station. There's a railway line here and this is a big town, so there must be one of those somewhere.

But if there is, it beats me where it might be because I can't find it and I didn't see a sign. There's an ex-railway station here now in private hands and there 's no access to the track, so either its out of town or else passenger trains don't stop here any more - something that I find totally surprising.

I had to content myself with trying to photograph a pile of locomotives parked up across the track.These are locomotives 2301 and 3016 of the Quebec-Gatineau Railroad Company, together with some friends.

We met 3016 in 2011. She passed in front of us while we were waiting at a level crossing by the paper mill on the outskirts of town.

While 2301 is new to us, she might be a sister to 2007 which was coupled to 3016 when we met. In any case, it's positively antedeluvian equipment.

Walking back from here towards the Platon, I had to say that the more that I see of Trois Rivieres, the less my opinion changes because it's still a dirty industrial town with dirty industrial housing as we know

However, there's some kind of comfortable feeling here that I rarely find in other places and maybe if I were to have a sight of the river and be out of the smell of damp wood, I could be at home here.

And so that was Trois Rivieres. And wasn't it impressive? I've completely changed my opinion of the place now and I'm really glad that I have taken all of this time to take a good look around.

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