Westworld Alberta

Winter 2013

Westworld Alberta

Issue link: http://westworldmagazine.ama.ab.ca/i/198651

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roadside Our Lady of the Prairie by Robin Schroffel F rom the highway, a high mound of stone and earth rising up from flat prairie is at first a disconcerting sight. But get close enough to gaze up at the dove-white Virgin Mary statue, tranquil in her recess of wax-stained stone, and you'll sense the serenity that blankets Skaro Shrine like a goose-down quilt. A legacy of Lamont County's early Polish homesteaders, the shrine at Skaro – 80 kilometres northeast of Edmonton – was handbuilt by parishioners of adjacent Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic church using some 600 cartloads of stones. They modelled it after the Grotto of Lourdes in France, a shrine built on the spot where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a peasant girl in 1858. 50 W e s t w o r l d a l b e r ta | w i n t e r 2 0 13 p50-51_Roadside.indd 50 Skaro is one of a handful of turn-of-the century shrines across the province (there's another at nearby Mundare and one farther west, in Lac Ste. Anne). It was completed in 1919, just in time for the August 15 Feast of the Assumption, the Catholic celebration of Mary's ascension into heaven. Thousands, from as far away as Calgary, flocked to the first event and the tradition has held strong for 95 years, with around 3,000 making the pilgrimage in 2013. Lifelong church member Rose Twardowski visits the shrine often. "Even in the wintertime, we have people trekking through the snow to come and light candles at the grotto, praying," she says. "It's a sacred place to me – holy ground." W curtis trent 13-10-15 9:59 AM

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