French-Canadian Letters

. J LETTERS IN CAN_ ADA_: r94T· PART II VI. FRENCH-CANADIAN · LETTERS W. E. CoLLIN' . I . . Father Richard Ares has published .the· third volume of his long work,·Notre §luestion nationale. Here he deals with "patriotic and national positions.,_. The l~st chapter is perhaps the most 1nteresting> for the light it throws on recent schools of cl.)ough.t. In the twentieth century, says Father Ares, French CaJ?.adians have.made an unprecedented :effort to giye themselves a coherent and logical "national'~ doctrine and formulate the_ ir ideal of survival. "fhere are two groups ·o·f writers• and orator~: the first, whose champion was Bourassa, put Canada first; the second group bases its doctrine ·on the fact of the existence of a French..:.Canadian ~enation." This anationalism," Canon Groulx would say, ant~da~es Confederation; . it plunges its roots int'o the past. It is an expression -of the will of the Fren'ch-Canadian people to free themselves more and ,more from English tutelage and to expand a French-Canadian-social and political order. And M. Min ville after him will 'say: our contribution · to the creation of .a ' Canadian nation will-be _ Catholic and French in spirit or none at all. As usual, a good deal of the literature p-ublished t.his .year is patently Catholic, some ·of it the direct result of the Marian Congress- held last · summer at Ottawa. It i~cludes ,(to enumerate- themes in books to he mentioned in this section and th~ next): histori,es of Catholic orders- and·missions) Catholic · spciology, Catholic poetry; certain novels, even, are merely attempts . to criticize life with the aid of Catholic theses. We are passing through a constellation of centenaries of religious orders in Quebec. The Brothers of-the Christian Schools arrived in 1837; the Oblate Fathers in 1841; 1841 ~vas the date ·of the founding of th. e Community of the Sisters o{ Jesus and Mary at Longueuil; 1846 saw the establishment of the Brothers· of the Sacred Heart1 and,1847 that of the Cle·rics of St. Viator at Joliette; in 1846 th.e Abbe Lafleche and Father Tache went west to found ·mis'sions in }{eewatin. The history of one of the latter, lle ala Crosse} is told by Father Lesage,- himself a. ~issionary, in Capitale d'une solitude. It is a story of . privations~l9ng journeys on snow-shoes or dog~s1eds, frozen hands and feet, drownings,. fires, famine, lonehr~ess, and disappointment. The scho'ol, we believe, has lately been taken over by, the Board of Education. Some of these heroes of the faith left their mark on literary history. . Mgr Tache. is remembered for his Vingt Annees de missions) and the Abbe La.fleche (sometimes called the Chrysostom of Canada) for his Cousiderations in·. which··he expounded the doctrine of the proyidential ~ission of the French Canadian people in America. The story of how Father Le Goff composed his grammar of the Mot=~tagnais language with the a,id of an Indian squaw is one of the amusing incidents in the book. Another missionary, Father 398 LETTERS .JN CANADA: 1947 .399 t ' Rossignol, translated the catechism into Cree and· published a series of articles on the customs and beliefs of chat tribe. A century ago Bisho.p· Bourget, faced wit~ the problem of providing his dioc~se· with Catholic. schools and ·having neither money, nor teachers, nor text-books, .invited religious congregations from France. Many came, took root, .and produced generations of teachers. One of them, th.e Institute of St. Viator, settled at"Joliette, a village named after the lumber magnate and benefactor, B. Jpliette. These .teaching brothers worked at. Berthier, Chambly, and at Montreal where rhey founded a school for deaf-mute·s. Then they es.tablished more distant· missions at Baker City, Vancouver, and at Bourbonnais near Chicago. The story of the first fifty years of the Insticute (1847-97), of the first Canadian superior, Father Champagneur~ and of .the labours of the brorhers is told by ~ne of them, Brother Antoine Bernard, in Les Clercs de Saint.,.JI'iateur au Canada and Vie du P~rt Cham-· pagn~ur. Y.le· have...