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.