After a decade hidden behind scaffolding, the front facade of Montreal’s iconic Notre-Dame Basilica has been fully restored and revealed. The work took hundreds of workers, thousands of hours and 10,000 stones. “It’s a big weight off of our shoulders,” said Michel Issa, executive director of the Fabrique de la paroisse Notre-Dame de Montréal. He said work on the facade began in 2016. “The statue of the Virgin Mary showed us signs that the hand was going to fall,” he explained, adding that an assessment found signs of water infiltration. Mathieu Verreault, the project’s director of operations, said the towers suffered the most damage. The original stones came from a quarry in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood, while the replacements came from Quebec City. Verrault said the assembly process was meticulous, with every stone checked and crafted in the traditional way. “The architect takes a hammer, he hits and by the sound he knows if the stone is good enough,” said Verreault. He said the only way to tell the new stones from the old is their lighter colour. The basilica is nearly 200 years old and is the first Gothic Revival church in Canada. “In the end, it was the largest building in North America, if not the Americas as a whole,” said Dinu Bumbaru with Heritage Montreal. With the facade finished, about 20 per cent of the work is complete. Repairs to the rest of the church’s exterior are still to come, along with interior restoration that could take another decade. The total cost of the project is projected at $100 million.
