Religious LIFE
Silent preachers amid nature’s song Text by the VISION editors Photos courtesy of Queen of Peace Monastery
Everyone gets a blessing—including the littlest—during the dedication of the Queen of Peace chapel and monastery, August 8, 2012, the Feast of Saint Dominic. The Queen of Peace Dominican nuns built their new monastery in British Columbia (opposite page) to enjoy and share with others the area’s natural beauty.
A small group of Dominican nuns hope that the monastery they built in mountains of Western Canada will become the voice of Jesus to anyone who stops to listen.
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58 | VISION 2014 | VocationNetwork.org
n 1999 several Dominican nuns took a chance on something new. They responded to a call from church leaders to leave their original communities and form a new Dominican monastery in Western Canada. They started out in a house in the city of Surrey, British Columbia. Two years later they were able to acquire a location in the country. When they outgrew that space, they relocated north of Vancouver in the Upper Squamish Valley, where, with the support of many benefactors and friends, they began to build Queen of Peace Monastery, with a vision of creating an environment “that communicates the vastness and the beauty of God.” They realized their vision in August 2012 with the completion of a chapel, residence, and small guesthouse specifically designed to showcase their glorious mountain surroundings. Although their daily life of prayer, labor, and periods of silence rarely takes them outside the monastery grounds, these nuns are networkers. They invited leaders from the First Nations (native peoples) to join them in blessing the land and built a walking path to welcome the public to enjoy their spectacular
