CHAPTER XV
THE BISHOP OF THE ARCTIC.
The trail hath no languorous longing;
It leads to no Lotus land;
On its way dead Hopes come thronging
To take you by the hand;
He who treads the trail undaunted, thereafter shall command.
—KATE SIMPSON HAYES.
Half a century ago Bishop Taché wrote a letter to France, in which he asked for some missionaries. In response to this appeal a certain young Grouard was sent to Fort Garry. When Bishop Taché looked over the slender stripling he said: "I asked for a man; they sent me a boy." But a year later he wrote again: "Please send me more boys." This was fifty years ago, and from that day to this the northern world has had but one opinion of Grouard—he makes good. He is a worker who sticks to his text. To-day, he is the head of the Catholic missions in the far north, and his diocese, until lately, included the very Yukon.
He is seventy-seven years old (but we don't believe it), with a leonine head, an unrazored face and a chest like a draught horse; an erect man who commands the instant attention of whatever company he enters. Assuredly, he is the type of the sound mind in the sound body. It is not to be wondered that his attractive personality made him the cynosure of all eyes, and that his name was on every tongue when, several years ago, he went to England, there to attend a great conference of his Church.
Bishop Grouard is alert in manner and has a kindly consideration for the poorest person. Attend you, sirs and madams, to observe the Old World courtesy in its highest perfection, you must see it in the person of a French gentleman who holds a position of honor in the far, far north, it is an absolutely truthful courtesy, that has its roots in a big warm heart, so that it becomes the very bone and fibre of the man. By way of placating our more southerly dignitaries in what may seem an invidious comparison, it may be urged that Bishop Grouard's urbanity has never suffered such cross-currents as the municipal watering cart, speed-limit fines, or the bill collectors, for, as yet, these well-conceived but ill-approved institutions are entirely unknown in the strangely blissful regions north of 55°.
It is for the fiftieth anniversary of Bishop Grouard's consecration as a priest that all of us have gathered from Edmonton to Hudson's Hope to celebrate. We are assembled at Grouard on Lesser Slave Lake, the missionary post that was built here forty-nine years ago and named after the hero of this day. Our assembly is what smart society reporters would describe as "mixed," and the word would be correctly used; nevertheless, the interest and colour of this occasion are in no inconsiderable measure due to this very fact. Besides, ours is a goodly fellowship.
Here we have Father Orcolan from Rome, who has written books on astronomy; Jake Gaudette, who was born in the Arctic Circle; Indian Chiefs from near and far, with their wives and children; big Jim Cornwall, the Cecil Rhodes of the north; Bishop Joussard, the coadjutor, a short man with a hard-bitten sun-scorched face; factors and traders from outlying posts (believe me, right merry gentlemen); Judge Noel and his legal company, who have been dispensing justice in the regions beyond; lean-hipped, muscular trappers who toe-in from walking on the trails; equally lean-hipped river men who toe-out from keeping their balance on a log; children from the mission schools; black-robed nuns, doctors, government officials, and stalwart ranchers in homespun and leather—even bankers. This short gentleman, who looks as if he had just heard a good idea, is George Fraser, wit and journalist. The tall man in khaki with the positive shoulders is Fred Lawrence, pioneer and trader, likewise Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; these and other interesting folk, the pictures of whom even my newly cut quill stops short at delineating. In truth, they are all here—the world and his wife—excepting only white girls. "It would seem too much like a special miracle," explains an Irish rancher, "to find half a dozen colleens set down here in Grouard—something like finding posies in the snow of December."
And the good Bishop Grouard is overcome because he doesn't deserve the homage of these people. "Truly, madame, I did not think to receive all this honour. I am only an old voyageur, a poor old fellow who gets near the end of the river."
"Does the paddle grow heavy, monseigneur?" I ask, "or is it that the journey is long?"
"Non, non, madame; it is the thought of home at the end, and the loved ones."
"But surely, monseigneur, the end is yet a long way off. Your eyes are not dimmed, neither is your natural force abated. And did we not this very day hear you speak to the tribes in six tongues?"
"Six was it?" queries the bishop. "Six! Ah, well! they seem to come to me easily. I feel like the man who had only to open his mouth to have roast ducklings fly therein."
Now this old northman has a close grip on twelve languages—it was Father Fahler who gave me the list—so that his modesty is truly disconcerting in an age wherein vanity seems to vary inversely with talent. He is a master in the use of Greek, Latin, French, English, Cree, Eskimo, Rabbitskin, Chippewaian, Beaver, Slavis, Dog Rib, and Loucheux.
Bishop Grouard is an exegete and printer of no mean order, having translated the service book of the Catholic Church into seven languages and printed them himself. I do not know if the printing press he brought into these northern fastnesses was the very first, but if not, it was assuredly the second, for there is only one other.
What these books have meant to the tribes it is not for mere terrestrial folk to say, but if the Catholic doctrine of supererogatory works be a reasonable and true one, of a surety it is a splendid balance that is laid up to the good bishop's account. In the more southerly provinces, where people like books, it is an easy matter for messieurs the publishers to roll out scores of editions to the greedy public, but up here in the north publishing a book becomes both a joke and a tragedy. In the first place, people do not care for books; in the second, the people do not know the alphabet.
This was how Bishop Grouard came to build schools for the children. He had to teach the Indians to read. If you care to you may go to the school across the bishop's driveway and see the children. There are hundreds of them, or even more, but if you wait awhile we will go together, for they are giving a play to-night, and at this moment are rehearsing their parts. It was Sister Egbert and Sister Ignatius who wrote the play; the theme, I have heard, is an incident in the life of the bishop.
But it takes a long time to learn reading; besides, there are many distractions. And then the older folk whose eyes are smoke-dimmed by the tepee fires may never hope to con the letters. It were ill reasoning to suppose so. For these people who are less literate the kind bishop painted pictures of angels on the walls and on the ceiling of the church, and he made one of the Crucifixion, over the altar, a glowing canvas instinct with living reality. The onlooker may truly say of this what Ruskin said of Raphael's "Transfiguration": "It goes directly to the heart. It seems almost to call you by name."
If you have lived long in the north you will have been wondering this while back how our workaday ecclesiastic got his materials into Grouard. How came his printing press, his type, his canvass, and his paints? Where did this man get the furniture for his schools, his hospitals, his church? Where did he get the boards for all these buildings?
The boards, curious person, were cut at his own saw-mill, from which boards he fashioned the furniture with his hands. "But how," you persist, "did he bring the machinery for his sawmill?"
That was easy; he brought it here in a steamboat. Any one could tell you that.
"But where did he get the steamboat?"
Oh! he built the boat himself—the first steamboat on the Lesser Slave Lake. In it, if he cared, he could carry his printing press and his canvases also.
It will not be surprising if the historians of the future appraise Bishop Grouard's combination of wisdom and action as something keenly akin to genius. Indeed, they are almost sure to.
I cannot tell you what the anniversary services meant—it cannot be expected of any one who is versed in the Thirty-nine Articles of the English Church instead of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin—but I came away from them with languorous impressions of golden robes, silver censers, and wavering lights, the odour of lilies and lilacs that wilted in the heat; a suspended cross with an agonized Christ, wan and attenuated; of purple and scarlet cloths, of dark-haired young priests, husky and brown-skinned. There were other things like a shepherd's crook, and smoke of incense, but, most of all, there was a music that mothered you and stayed with you. In some way or other these old plaintive songs of Egypt seem fitted to the boreal regions, but why I cannot explain.
In the city we must perforce set a stage for a drama, but here Nature has made a setting for us high on a hill overlooking a wide meadow that slopes to the bay. You have read something like this in classic myths, or maybe it was in Shakespeare, but it doesn't greatly matter; the play is the thing. For myself, I made believe that is the slope of Parnassus—for the Pythian hero was also a promoter of colonization, a founder of cities, a healer of the sick, an institutor of games, a patron of arts.
It is on this outdoor stage in its June-tide glory that we banquet; that we sing; that we play our parts. And it is here that Keenosew the Fish, chief of the Crees, with rapid rush of speech and voice of military sharpness, presents the homage of his tribe. In like manner do also the other representatives of other northerly tribes. Each chief wears a Treaty medal as a pledge from her Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria.
It is here also that a fair-faced woman of our company expresses the reverence of her sisters of the diocese for Monseigneur the Bishop, and, as a token of the same, presents to him a plate heaped high with coins of gold.
And from this hill it is that we ride through the newly cut road, a thousand men and women of us in stately procession, but withal gaily caparisoned. Observe, if you will, our ribbons and fringes of gold; the little flags in our bridles; our lynx-skin saddle clothes, and the wreaths of purple vetch that hang from the pommels. Look well at our black soutanes, scarlet coats, grey homespuns, and yellow moose hides, for we are proud this day and wear our finest feathers. It is not well to be disturbed by the untamable naughtiness of our horses, for the northern trailer, you must have heard, has no stomach for glitter of trappings, neither does he like the feel of neighbours. As we ramble down a white aisle of birch and poplar, the feet of our horses tread out for us the odour of leaf mould, which odour is the panacea of the world.
We do not ride with any preconceived plans, or because of any propaganda. Neither are we knights who sally forth to right wrongs, albeit we have the truest knights of all with us—he who has snow on his head but fire in his heart; he who has taught these tribes by doing.....
This day we ride without review or forecast. We ride because we are glad. All we ask of life is room to rove adown this long white pathway in this young world. It is the best that life can give—room to ride.