MONTREAL—As a seemingly endless line of people inched their way out of the cold and into Montreal’s gothic Notre-Dame Basilica to pay their respects to her husband and manager René Angélil, it was the 47-year-old superstar from Charlemagne, Que., who ended up consoling her fans.

After wiping away her own tears at the public visitation for Angélil ahead of Friday’s national funeral in Quebec, she wiped away the tears of fans and accepted their gifts of condolence cards, photos and souvenirs.

The stoic singer even ended up comforting some of the accredited journalists on hand to cover her funeral of her impresario husband, including one who gushed: “I’m her biggest fan.”

Dion was expected to greet the public for 30 minutes at the beginning and end of the visitation period, but ended up staying for more than seven hours with her husband’s open casket just a metre away.

First she privately welcomed close friends and family of Angélil, who died from cancer Jan. 14 at the age of 73.

The musician-turned-manager’s greatest success came at the age of 38 when he discovered the 12-year-old prodigy and built an empire around her. The couple married in 1994 when he was 51 and she was 26.

“It was moving and in the image of René,” Sonia Benezra, a Quebec television and radio personality, said of the setting inside the church. “It was enormous, grandiose, but very calm and very soft, like his voice and the look in his eyes. René did everything large.”

The visitation continued in a public session that was supposed to last from 2-9 p.m. but was extended until late Thursday evening.

Julia Martin, who travelled to Montreal from her home in California to be at the visitation and funeral, said Dion recognized her and greeted her with a hug just a month after their last encounter with the singer at a show in Las Vegas.

“She said, ‘I can’t believe you’re here’ and, ‘Thank you for your support,’ ” Martin said following the visit.

“This is what we’ve gotten from them in the last 20 years. This is why we’re fans. This is how you treat your fans. René was famous for that.”

Martin’s friend, Jimena Valdez, whose love of Dion’s music partly inspired her to immigrate to Montreal from Mexico several years ago, told the singer that her fans are like family — there in good times and bad.

“I just admire her so much for her strength. She was consoling people. It should be the other way around, but she was wiping tears off of people,” Valdez said.

Those people came from all around the world, including Vicky Lee, who was visiting Montreal from China and waited more than three hours to get inside the church.

“We told her when we learned about the news we felt sorry for her and we wanted to express our condolences . . . . I told her to be strong and that I love her music and René as well,” she said.

Though plans have not been revealed, Friday’s funeral service is expected to include an international VIP guest list and will be an elaborate affair in keeping with the couple’s style. Among the floral arrangements that were delivered to the church Thursday was a massive collection of spray-painted dandelions in the shape of a Grammy Award, which Dion has won on five occasions, and another in the shape of the Montreal Canadiens logo, a team that Angélil tried to purchase in 2009.

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But the private visitation was a more local gathering of celebrities from Quebec including the actor and former Liberal senator Jean Lapointe and Marc Dupré, a singer who is married to Angélil’s daughter, Anne-Marie Angélil. They are figures who might not be known outside the province, but nevertheless loomed large in Dion and Angélil’s universe.

Television producer Julie Snyder, who is married to Parti Québécois leader and former media mogul Pierre Karl Péladeau, said Angélil was a cultural and entrepreneurial force in the province.

“He was to show business what Maurice Richard was to hockey. He’s my idol and the idol of a people. Everyone loves Céline Dion, but everyone loves and admires René Angélil profoundly in Quebec. He gave us the feeling that we were just as good as the others,” she said on her way into the church.

He also ensured work for technicians and other production staff from Quebec, she said.

“He could very well have done business with production companies in Los Angeles or New York or wherever he went, but Sony Music in New York had to go through a Québécois company,” said Snyder, whose production company has collaborated with Dion and Angélil frequently. “We spent a lot of time applying for work permits to go to the U.S.

“We went to the U.S. and we went around the world with them and it was a 100 per cent Quebec team.”

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