Two things we learned in school today

"[In the 1540's] men were so eager to hear the Word of God that they even clustered round the lecterns while the priest was saying prayers at the altar.  More than once some reader would slip from his place in the church as the clergyman mounted the pulpit.  As soon as the dull, creaky voice in the pulpit announced its text, the Bible reader announced that he would read the story of the Good Samaritan or David and Goliath.  There was no doubt which was the more interesting.  Before the poor parson had got well into his dreary discourse his congregation had forgotten about him and was eagerly listening to find out if the shepherd boy slew the giant or if the man robbed by the wayside really died.

"The Bible had become a part of the life of the English people."--Makers of the English Bible: The Story of the Bible in English, by Cyril Davey

"Early in the morning [of July 1, 1867], the royal salutes began. At Saint John, New Brunswick, the twenty-one guns in honour of this greatest of all modern marriages were fired off at four o'clock.  At six o'clock they sounded out from Fort Henry, just across the river from Kingston....High Mass was sung in the cathedral of Three Rivers at seven o'clock in the morning....The steamer America brought nearly 300 visitors across the lake from St. Catharines to swell the crowd in Toronto....And down the Eastern Townships all the shops were shut; the streets were bright with flags and bunting.  Down in the Maritime provinces, where the anti-Confederates watched the bright day with sullen disapproval...a few doors were hung with bunches of funereal black crepe."--D.G. Creighton, The Young Politician, quoted in Canada: The New Nation, by Edith Deyell

Photo of the Coverdale Bible found here
Photo of Prince George Hotel on July 1, 1867 found here