After the Conquest of New France in 1760, Catholic religious
freedoms were limited, but progressively the British were
obliged to make concessions as their colony did not simply
revert to the use of English. The religious issue was complex,
because the colony of Lower Canada was now a subject of the
British Crown, which was also the head of the Church of England.
The head of the Catholic Church was the pope at the Vatican, but
as the population was French speaking, the clergy had all come
from France and the British had no interest in importing
clergymen from France, which was also aggravated by years of war
and revolution. In the interim, several religious orders,
notably the Jesuits, in Canada had died out and their belongings
had reverted to the State. So it was that the archdiocese of
Québec at the beginning of the 19th century extended to the
Pacific.
Although there were clergymen who accompanied the LaVérendrye
expeditions, the first secular priest to come on a permanent
basis to the West was J. Provencher and J. Dumoulin, at the
invitation of the governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company and Lord
Selkirk, following the Seven Oaks affair in the Red River Valley
in 1818.
It was only after 1840 that diplomatic relations finally
rectified this situation and that the Catholic clergy of Québec
was given the right to recruit missionary orders from France.
A few missionaries attached to the diocese of Québec had come
out West to help Provencher who had become bishop coadjutor of
the district of the North-West. Belcourt, Demers, Blanchet,
Thibault, Bourassa.
Thibault wrote a number of letters to his superior, Bishop
Provencher telling him of his travels to Portage-la-Loche and of
the great welcome he had received from the Métis there. They
pressed him to come further North and bring the comforts of
religion to them. They also requested priests. Provencher had
the letters copied and sent on to Montreal and Québec where the
religious establishment read them with joy and wonder.
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