The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval | Page 4

there.
Certain historians have regretted that the first savages encountered by
the French in North America should have been Hurons; an alliance
made with the Iroquois, they say, would have been a hundred times
more profitable for civilization and for France. What do we know about
it? Man imagines and arranges his plans, but above these arrangements
hovers Providence--fools say, chance--whose foreseeing hand sets all in
order for the accomplishment of His impenetrable design. Yet, however
firmly convinced the historian may be that the eye of Providence never
sleeps, that the Divine Hand is never still, he must be sober in his
observations; he must yield neither to his fancy nor to his imagination;
but neither must he banish God from history, for then everything in it
would become incomprehensible and inexplicable, absurd and barren.
It was this same God who guides events at His will that inspired and
sustained the devoted missionaries in their efforts against the
revenue-farmers in the matter of the sale of intoxicating liquors to the
savages. The struggle which they maintained, supported by the
venerable Bishop of Petræa, is wholly to their honour; it was a question
of saving even against their will the unfortunate children of the woods
who were addicted to the fatal passion of intoxication. Unhappily, the
Governors d'Avaugour and de Mézy, in supporting the greed of the
traders, were perhaps right from the political point of view, but
certainly wrong from a philanthropic and Christian standpoint.
The colony continuing to prosper, and the growing need of a national
clergy becoming more and more felt, Mgr. de Laval founded in 1663 a
seminary at Quebec. The king decided that the tithes raised from the
colonists should be collected by the seminary, which was to provide for
the maintenance of the priests and for divine service in the established
parishes. The Sovereign Council fixed the tithe at a twenty-sixth.
The missionaries continued, none the less, to spread the light of the
gospel and Christian civilization. It seems that the field of their labour
had never been too vast for their desire. Ever onward! was their motto.
While Fathers Garreau and Mesnard found death among the

Algonquins on the coasts of Lake Superior, the Sulpicians Dollier and
Gallinée were planting the cross on the shores of Lake Erie; Father
Claude Allouez was preaching the gospel beyond Lake Superior;
Fathers Dablon, Marquette, and Druillètes were establishing the
mission of Sault Ste. Marie; Father Albanel was proceeding to explore
Hudson Bay; Father Marquette, acting with Joliet, was following the
course of the Mississippi as far as Arkansas; finally, later on, Father
Arnaud accompanied La Vérendrye as far as the Rocky Mountains.
The establishment of the Catholic religion in Canada had now
witnessed its darkest days; its history becomes intimately interwoven
with that of the country. Up to the English conquest, the clergy and the
different religious congregations, as faithful to France as to the Holy
See, encouraged the Canadians in their struggles against the invaders.
Accordingly, at the time of the invasion of the colony by Phipps, the
Americans of Boston declared that they would spare neither monks nor
missionaries if they succeeded in seizing Quebec; they bore a particular
grudge against the priests of the seminary, to whom they ascribed the
ravages committed shortly before in New England by the Abenaquis.
They were punished for their boasting; forty seminarists assembled at
St. Joachim, the country house of the seminary, joined the volunteers
who fought at Beauport, and contributed so much to the victory that
Frontenac, to recompense their bravery, presented them with a cannon
captured by themselves.
The Church of Rome had been able to continue in peace its mission in
Canada from the departure of Mgr. de Laval, in 1684, to the conquest
of the country by the English. The worthy Bishop of Petræa, created
Bishop of Quebec in 1674, was succeeded by Mgr. de St. Vallier, then
by Mgr. de Mornay, who did not come to Canada, by Mgr. de Dosquet,
Mgr. Pourroy de l'Aube-Rivière, and Mgr. de Pontbriant, who died the
very year in which General de Lévis made of his flags on St. Helen's
Island a sacred pyre.
In 1760 the Protestant religion was about to penetrate into Canada in
the train of the victorious armies of Great Britain, having been
proscribed in the colony from the time of Champlain. With conquerors

of a different religion, the rôle of the Catholic clergy became much
more arduous and delicate; this will be readily admitted when we recall
that Mgr. Briand was informally apprised at the time of his
appointment that the government of England would appear to be
ignorant of his consecration and induction by the Bishop of Rome. But
the clergy managed to keep itself on a level with its task. A systematic