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 communion many times in the year; at Easter there are practically no abstentions from the sacrament.  With this unanimity it has been possible to establish by legislation a most elaborate system providing for the support of the priests, for keeping up cemeteries and other parish needs.  Elsewhere left largely to voluntary action, in Quebec such duties become a tax on the community as a whole.  Whether a parishioner likes it or not, he must, if the taxpayers so determine, pay his share for building a church or for other similar expenditure decided upon.

We will suppose that a new residence for the priest is desired.  A majority of ratepayers must address to the bishop of the diocese a petition with a plan of what is proposed.  The commission of five members which exists in every diocese then gives ten days’ public notice in order that objectors may have every opportunity to express their views.  When, in the end, a decision to build is reached, the commissioners announce this by public proclamation.  The next step is for the ratepayers of the parish to meet and vote the necessary money.  Trustees are then appointed