Planting the Lord's Garden in New France: Gabriel Sagard's Le Grand Voyage and Histoire du Canada

Planting the Lord's Garden in New France: Gabriel Sagard's Le Grand Voyage and Histoire du Canada Maureen F. O'Meara University of Dayton Gabriel Sagard, a Recollect brother, traveled as a missionary in New France from 1623 to 1629 when the Recollects were forced to leave Canada after the English temporarily occupied Quebec. For him, Canada represented "lejardin de Dieu" (Histoire 170) where the souls of Amerindians could be reaped for the Christian God.1 Both the Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons,2 published in 1632 after Sagard's forced return to France, and the expanded version called the Histoire du Canada published in 1636 tell the story of the Recollects' efforts in establishing this garden. But they also represent a plea for the return of the rightful gardeners to their property. For when the 1632 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye returned Quebec to the French, the Recollects were not allowed to board the ships that carried three Jesuit missionaries to the New World.3 The metaphoric use of gardening for conversion and salvation is made more explicit in the Histoire du Canada than it was in the Grand Voyage. Sagard's story is framed there by both a vision of what the Lord's garden in New Canada could be with the support of powerful religious and merchant patrons in France and the frustration of the missionary effort without this support. The references to conversion as gardening structure the new telling of the story. In the first volume of the Histoire Sagard quotes the 1620 letter which Father Denis Jamet addressed to the Grand Vicaire ofPontoise in order to encourage his participation in this new venture of civilization and to demonstrate the goals of the Recollect mission: . . . puisque Dieu vous a imprimé en l'ame le désir de bien faire en la Nouvelle France (comme vous faictes tous les iours en l'ancienne), & de seconder ceux [les Recollets] qui pour l'amour de Dieu & le salut des ames, quittent la douceur de leur patrie pour s'establir en un pays sauvage & inculte, afin qu'en cultivant les terres, l'on trouve moyen de cultiver les ames. (Histoire 68) 11 12Rocky Mountain Review [. . . since God has imprinted on your soul the desire to do good in New France (as you do everyday in France) and to second those who for the love of God and the salvation of souls leave the comforts of their country to establish themselves in a savage, uncultivated land so as to, in cultivating the land, find a way to cultivate souls.]4 In this same letter, Jamet requests assistance to support six to eight boys to work the land in order to realize the Recollects' dreams of sustaining families, populating the country, and establishing a seminary for Amerindian children (71-72). The significance of this dream of a seminary as a garden becomes clear when we reflect that the name séminaire is based on the verb semer, to sow. The Recollects envisage a place, where, as in a hothouse, Amerindian boys can be raised under new conditions to become the basis for the Christian community of New France. In the second book ofthe Histoire, following his denunciation ofthe lack of support of the French merchants for this new community, Sagard returns to the garden metaphor to urge new associates that it is not too late to involve themselves with this new venture, first stating "les choses ne sont pas trop tard quand elles sont bien" and then proclaiming that the New World "est le Jardin de Dieu, duquel les fruicts meurissent en leurs temps, quand ils sont arrosez de la benediction du Tres Haut" (170) ["Things are not too late when they are good . . . this is God's garden, whose fruits ripen in their own time, when they are watered by the benediction of the Most High"]. Much later, speaking ofthe reactions to Father Joseph Caron's speech at the time of an Amerindian boy's baptism, Sagard compares them to the Biblical story of the grains that fell on good soil while others fell on hard rock (518). Toward the end of the Histoire, he emphasizes the tragedy that the...