In 1946, Monsignor Ronald MacLean of the Diocese of Antigonish was a chaplain in the Royal Canadian Navy and was on the RCN ship Uganda when it docked in Acapulco, Mexico. During that visit he learned of the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the existence of the shrine erected in her honour in what is now a suburb of Mexico City.

Father Daniel Doucet, a former parish priest at Sacred Heart Parish in Johnstown, Cape Breton, traces the history of the devotion at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe established in that parish. It was Monseignor MacLean who, when at a later date he became pastor at Johnstown, commissioned the construction, in Mexico, of a mosaic of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This was erected on the grounds of Sacred Heart Church in the summer of 1963, and dedicated on September 8, 1963, by Bishop William E. Power of the Diocese of Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

The entire project of building the Johnstown shrine was under the direction of Peter F. Campbell; Tom Cash sawed lumber for it at his mill; Anne MacNeil of Hay Cove painted the background for the mosaic; Malcolm MacNeil, a native of Iona, Cape Breton and a successful businessman in Boston, paid for all expenses beyond the considerable volunteer work on the project.

The shrine now includes a Tepeyac Trail, built by Eddie Dunphy of the parish. This commemorates the road traveled by Juan Diego, and the place where Our Lady appeared to him on a number of occasions, beginning on December 9, 1953. Her image was preserved on Juan Diego's cloak.

On the mosaic at Johnstown can be seen the Blessed Virgin, a girl of fourteen years, with features typical of the Aztec people and other details which contributed to the acceptance of Our Lady of the Aztecs and the formal proclamation of Pope Pius XII in 1945 of her as "Empress of all the Americas", and again of Pope John XXIII in 1960 as "Mother of the Americas".

The shrine at Johnstown is the first of it's kind in Canada. Father Doucet begins his book with the trip of Monsignor MacLean and Michael Joe H. MacNeil of Johnstown, then a young man of nineteen in November of 1962, to Montreal to pick up the mosaic. The book then moves on to recount the history of the apparitions in Mexico. This is followed by a chapter on the story of Cesar Chavez as a model of a "Guadalupe person" in his battle to protect the rights of the poor migrant workers in the U.S.A. Still later it deals with the healings at Johnstown attributed to Our Lady, as well as with the annual festival held in her honour.

This work also treats the significance of the devotion for us today, the annual pilgrimage to Mexico from Cape Breton, and how all of this fits into official Church guidelines for devotional practice. In so doing, Doucet points out that the devotion is biblically-based and is rooted in concern for social justice and especially in the promotion of the rights of the poor.