Mount Royal Cross

This guide to the Mount Royal Cross in Montreal opens with a colonial governor's panicked vow to the Virgin Mary during a 1643 flood, and his solitary climb up a frozen mountain in January to keep it. Two centuries later, a Sulpician priest named Pierre Dupaigne became obsessed with making that promise permanent, drawing up plans grander than what the city's coffers could cover. Montreal's schoolchildren pitched in to help finish his design, selling commemorative stamps door to door around the city.