MGR. J. B. DE LA CROIX CHEVRIERES DE SAINT-VALLIER
MARQUIS JACQUES-RENE DE BRISAY DENONVILLE
A gloomy picture of Canadian life, which applies equally to Montreal, was sent by Denonville to France in his letters of August 20, September 3 and November 12, 1685. "The youths," he says, "are so badly trained that the moment they are able to shoulder a gun their fathers dare not speak reprovingly to them. They do not take kindly to labour, having no occupation but hunting; they prefer the life of the coureur de bois, where there is no curé or father to restrain them, and in which they adopt the life of the Indian even to going about naked. The life has great attractions for them, for on carnival days and other days of feasting and debauchery they imitate the Indian in all things, their company being frequently lawless and unruly. The noblesse of Canada is in a condition of extreme poverty. To increase their number is to multiply a class of lounging idlers. The sons of the councillors are not more industrious than the other youths. The men are tall, well made, well set up, robust, active, accustomed to live on little. They are wayward, lightminded and inclined to debauchery but have intelligence and veracity; the women and girls, pretty, but idle from want of occupation in the minor work of the sex.
"Nothing," says Denonville, "can be finer or better conceived than the regulations formed for the government of this country; but nothing, I assure you, is so ill-observed as regards both the fur trade and the general discipline of the colony. One great evil is the infinite number of drinking shops, which makes it almost impossible to remedy the disorders resulting from them. All the rascals and idlers of the country are attracted to this business of tavern keeping. They never dream of tilling the soil, but on the contrary they deter the other inhabitants from it, and end with ruining them. I know seignories where there are but twenty houses, and more than half of them dram shops. At Three Rivers there are twenty-five houses and liquor may be had at eighteen or twenty of them. Ville Marie (Montreal) and Quebec are on the same footing. The villages governed by the Jesuits and Sulpicians are models. Drunkenness there is not seen. But it is sad to see the ignorance of the population at a distance from the abodes of the curés, who are put to the greatest trouble to remedy the evils, traveling from place to place through the parishes in their charges." (Denonville au ministre, Parkman, "Old Régime," pp. 375-6-7; vide, résumé of Kingsford, I, 65.)
The clergy, however, did their work manfully and unflinchingly and it was their devotion to their work of upbuilding the morality and character of the French Canadians that assured them the prestige which is enjoyed by them to this day. Bishop St. Vallier confirms Denonville, La Barre, Duchesneau and other contemporary writers when he says that, "the Canadian youths are for the most part demoralized," and although previously, in 1688, he had written very favourably on the religious state of Canada, in a pastoral mandate of October 31, 1690, he says: "Before we first knew our flock we thought that the English and the Iroquois were the only wolves we had to fear; but God having opened our eyes to the disorders of this diocese and made us feel more and more the weight of our charge, we are forced to confess that our most dangerous foes are drunkenness, impurity, and slander." The Canadian drank hard and many a man was old at forty. "But," says Parkman ("Old Régime," p. 378), "nevertheless the race did not die out. The prevalence of early marriages and the birth of numerous offspring before the vigour of the father had been wasted ensured the strength and hardihood which characterized the Canadians." Bishop St. Vallier soon visited Montreal and his description of the mountain settlement we have already given.
Here we may add a scathing picture which occurs in the ordinance of Monseigneur Jean Baptiste de Saint-Vallier, dated October 22, 1686, touching modesty and the want of veneration in the churches. It may justly apply to the Montreal ladies of the period, since it complains, "of the luxury and the vanity reigning, throughout the whole country among the girls and grown-up women, with more licence and scandal than ever. They are not content to have on them habits, the price and style of which are much above the means or the condition of life of those wearing them, but they affect moreover immodest head-dresses within and without their homes, and often even in the churches, leaving heads uncovered or only decked with a transparent veil and with an assemblage of ribbons, lace work, curls and other vanities. But what is still more to be deplored, and what pierces our soul with sorrow, is that they have no difficulty in rendering themselves the instruments of the demon and in cooperating with the loss of souls, bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, by uncovering the nudités of their neck and shoulders, the sight of which makes an infinite number of persons to fall." The good bishop might be similarly shocked if he visited Montreal today. [132]