About half of everything with a name in Québec geography is named after a saint or a divine person. My personal favourite place name is one of them: the town of Saint-Louis-du-Ha!-Ha! (No, really.)
And they had all those little toy chapel things by the side of the road, my mother explained what they were, but I've forgotten.
Wayside shrines and crosses. Many of them are monuments to events. Most are territory markers, whether literal or figurative - they were often a means by which French Catholics asserted their cultural identity in a country where they are in the minority. The Catholic Church was very powerful in Québec until the 1960s, when the "Quiet Revolution" secularized the province nearly overnight.
Who knows if Canada is even still like this? They've gone so wacky in other ways.
The religious influence in Québec is still obvious, though the province's Catholicism is now largely "cultural" rather than devout. Though Canada has no formal separation of church and state, in many respects we are more secular than our American friends.
Thanks for your informative reply. Things really went to heck in the 60s all over didn't they? Maybe later generations will be able to correct some of the egregious errors.