Egan: The little miracles born when churches burn to the ground

The burning of a church seems blasphemous, a stabbing reminder that even beautiful, sacred things — fortressed in stone — can have their permanence made ashes.
One raw night in November 1978, my brother looked out the front window of our ratty apartment on Henderson Avenue (in uOttawa’s student ghetto) and saw a bright orange reflected, row on row, in every window in the school across the street. Somewhere west, the sky was on fire. Soon, a massive plume of smoke was dropping p