Ottawa parishioners eager to celebrate Easter services without restrictions

For the first time in three years church doors opened for Easter Sunday without COVID-19 restrictions.

“Exciting! It is a good way to start things up,” Deborah Kieelly Adam said, on her way into the Notre Dame Basilica in Ottawa on Sunday morning. 

For the first time since the pandemic began, the vaulted cathedral filled every pew on the ground floor and was able to open the balcony to parishioners. 

“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,” Pauline McLellan rejoiced. 

“I don’t know how many times I sang that hallelujah at the end of the mass, gosh many times,” her husband Richard, a former Deacon, added.