Bishop Grouard, though now well advanced in years, continues a work very similar to that of his great contemporary. Both were familiar with all the great streams of the north. Each had trodden over the same trails, each knew as few others did the natives for whose welfare they had both in their early life relinquished pleasant surroundings in the Old World, for both belonged to influential if not noble families, Bompas in England and Grouard in France.
I met Bishop Grouard only twice. First en route on the Upper Athabaska on my way back from Peace River, and a few years later at Smith’s Landing on the Slave River. At first he was far from his home, visiting his scattered flock and superintending the work of his clergy over a diocese much larger than the whole of his native country.
On the last occasion he was hurrying back to his head-quarters before starting for a journey to Rome where he expected to be in about six weeks, but only for a short time, for circumstances compelled him to be back with his charge before the long winter set in.
It is said that politics make strange bedfellows. The same may be said of travelling in the sparsely settled districts of the north. More particularly in what might be called the border land between the pioneer settlements and the wilderness. When a journey is to be made in the latter, one goes prepared with his own tent and camp equipment and in most cases he is much more comfortable than when he is approaching civilisation where there are certain houses of accommodation called “sleeping places,” but usually pronounced without the sound of the final “g” in the first word.
Once I had the honour of occupying a place on a wide bed made on the floor of one of these road houses. Among the company thus accommodated were Bishop Young of Athabaska Landing, the late Bishop Holmes, then Archdeacon of Lesser Slave Lake, a Roman Catholic priest from Peace River and several half breeds. Bishop Young and I agreed to “double up” under the same blankets while the Archdeacon and Père Lazaret made the same arrangement.
After each of the men of Holy Orders had offered up his evening devotions in his own forms, the priest and the Archdeacon, who were neighbours in the mission field, commenced a conversation, not in the native language of either the one or the other but in the Cree tongue. There was no affectation in this on the part of either. Father Lazaret was of course familiar with French his mother tongue but knew very little English, while the Archdeacon, an Englishman by birth, was not particularly fluent in la langue Française; but a common ground of communication was found in the tongue of the Cree Indian in which both were equally at home.
Father Lazaret was at this time fifty-four years of age. Twenty-seven years before he had come out from France as a young missionary at once entering the field in the neighbourhood of Peace River, and this was the first time that he had ventured out even as far as Edmonton. As we approached this modern city in the evening with its lighted streets and throngs of busy people and he mentally compared it with the little port of the lonely post twenty-seven years before, his surprise at the change can well be imagined. He was then on his way back to visit his aged mother and to bid her a last farewell; then to return again to end his days on the banks of the Peace; for him at least, so happily named.
Speaking of the use of different languages reminds me of the case of a lay brother of the Oblate Brotherhood whom we met at the Roman Catholic mission at Fort Good Hope near the Arctic Circle on the Mackenzie. Forty years before he had left Ireland and joined the members of his order in that distant field. Most of the clergy were French and it was seldom indeed that he heard his mother tongue. The consequence was that while he spoke French fluently, with a Hibernian accent, and also the language of the Indian tribes of the country he informed me that it was with great difficulty that he could remember how to express himself in the tongue of his fathers. Thus do men of the older civilisations sacrifice themselves for the sake of the most lofty ideal the world has ever known.
CONCLUSION
AN APPEAL
I cannot close without calling public attention to a matter that impressed me very forcibly on my journey and which has ever since been before my mind, and that is the great need for the establishment of a hospital somewhere in that vast region of the Mackenzie watershed and its vicinity. Here is a country sparsely populated to be sure, but of vast extent compared with which most European countries are insignificant. Between Edmonton and the Arctic Sea we pass over sixteen degrees of latitude, while the distance by the travelled route is over 2000 miles. Again from the Rocky Mountains on the west to the Hudson Bay on the east the distance is almost equally as great.