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Missing Mary, storied grotto still draws faithful Our Lady of Lourdes dedication to beloved Father Olvia Lapointe never completed
Thandiwe Vela
Even in the dead of winter, faint footsteps in knee-deep snow lead up to the elevated grotto -- built more than two decades ago beside the Rocking Horse Ranch. For many years, people have placed flowers, trinkets, rosaries, and other items at the shrine, since prominent Yellowknifer Johnny Rocher commissioned the erection of the grotto as a dedication to the late Father Olvia Lapointe. "Johnny, being a friend of Father Lapointe, and being Catholic, he wanted to make a gift to please father. So he said, 'I'll build you a grotto and we'll put the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes,'" said Bishop Emeritus Denis Croteau, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith. "Because our Lady, Blessed Virgin Mary, we (Catholics) have a great devotion to Mary, the Mother of Jesus (Christ)." Incomplete to this day, the grotto was supposed to serve as a reminder of the 1858 appearance of a lady in a cave to a poor teenage girl in France named Bernadette Soubirous. As Croteau tells the dogmatic story, the lady by the stream wore white and blue, and identified herself to Soubirous -- who would later be sainted by the Catholic Church -- as the Immaculate Conception, and instructed Soubirous to go see the priest, and ask him to bless a basilica, or big church, at the grotto in south France where she appeared. For the past 150 years, the grotto, the basilica Our Lady of Lourdes, as well as a pool in the town of Lourdes, France, have been pilgrimage destinations for millions of people from all over the world, said Croteau, who visited the site in 1979. "I saw the shrine, I saw the source, I saw the pool. And thousands and thousands of pilgrims are there," he said. "They bring the sick people into that cold, cold water straight from the ground and many are healed. Many miracles take place there." While there are grotto sites in Fort Simpson, Paulatuk, and Fort Smith with a statue of Mary in each one, the lady in blue, who appears in the Rocking Horse Ranch grotto is definitely not Mary, said regional Bishop Murray Chatlain. "People have left rosaries and offerings I think thinking that they are asking for Mother Mary's help but the statue there is not Mother Mary. It's not a saint even, unfortunately," he said, surmising the statue, almost sultry, could depict some sort of mythological goddess of wine. In the Catholic Church, saints are usually identified by characteristics such as leaves of clover for St. Patrick, and arrows for St. Sebastian, he said. Mary is usually depicted holding baby Jesus, or nothing. Chatlain has a statue of Mary sitting at the Trapper's Lake Spiritual Lodge, across the highway from the grotto, that he wishes could be substituted for the statue currently in the grotto. "That is clearly Mother Mary," he said, pointing to the lodge statue. "And so if people wanted to leave offerings and rosaries that would be a more appropriate statue to leave it by, because it is quite a nice grotto." Croteau remembers when he arrived in Yellowknife in 1990, Rocher had already been building the grotto, having hired a stone mason to construct the rock wall behind the igloo-shaved cave on a stage, with steps. Father Lapointe, who served in Kugluktuk for 50 years, and was fluent in English, French, and Inuktitut, helped Rocher with the building of the grotto, before he retired with the Oblates in Edmonton in 1992. The grotto was meant to be a gathering place for the people of the North, and to include symbols of the mines and aboriginal culture, such as a teepee and an inukshuk, a family member said, who asked not to be identified. The statue of the lady in blue which appears there today, was put inside as a place holder, as Rocher awaited the arrival of the centrepiece of the grotto—a bonafide statue of the Virgin Mary, Croteau believes. The shrine was never completed as the Rocking Horse Ranch land, once subleased to the Rochers by the city, became embroiled in controversy. In 1998, city hall officials decided to cancel Rocher's sublease because of the derelict vehicles, old appliances and other odds and ends amassed on the 40-acre property. Although the property was cleared of the junk, the Rocher's sublease has not been renewed, leaving the grotto on city land. Member of the Rocher family declined to comment on the record for this story. "Catholics who drive by, they know what it means," said Croteau. "They will make a prayer, make a sign of the cross, maybe go to pray the rosary ... It's a kind of place where they could sit down, meditate and pray. "If people want to go there and make it a little pilgrimage site, it would depend on the town."
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