United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Since its founding the Jesuits Poncet, Du Peron, Le Moyne, and Pijart, who had been trained in the difficult school of the Huron mission, and Le Jeune and Druillettes, had ministered to the inhabitants. But in August 1657 the Sulpician priests Gabriel de Queylus, Gabriel Souart, and Dominic Galinier arrived at Ville Marie, and the Jesuits immediately surrendered the parish to them.

The generosity of the faithful vied in enthusiasm, and gifts flowed in. M. de Maisonneuve offered a cannon, of which M. Souart had a bell made at his expense.

I shall keep with religious respect the three beads of her rosary you were good enough to send me." But the renown of her virtues was not confined to Canada alone. There were in France also many distinguished persons who knew her merit, among others M. Gabriel Souart, who, as we have seen, was sent to Canada in 1657, by M. Olier, and who returned to France in 1680, on account of failing health.

He was received both at Quebec and Ville-Marie with all the respect due to his dignity and birth, encountering no opposition in the discharge of his duties in either city. M. Souart was appointed pastor of Ville-Marie, the Jesuit Father, Claude Pigots, who had until then discharged the duties of pastor, resigning gracefully in his favor.

From a healthy bud issues a fine fruit: just as the smaller seminary of Quebec gave birth to the Laval University, so from the school of M. Souart sprang in 1733 the College of Montreal, transferred forty years later to the Château Vaudreuil, on Jacques Cartier Square; then to College Street, now St. Paul Street.

From the bosom of this city had sprung the seventeen heroes who gave to the world, at the foot of the Long Sault, a magnificent example of what the spirit of Christian sacrifice can do; to a population which gave of its own free will its time and its labour to the building of a temple for the Lord, God had assigned a leader, who took upon his shoulders a heavy wooden cross, and bore it for the distance of a league up the steep flanks of Mount Royal, to plant it solemnly upon the summit; within the walls of the seminary lived men like M. Souart, physician of hearts and bodies, or like MM. Lemaître and Vignal, who were destined to martyrdom; in the halls of the hospital Mlle.

I do not relate them to you in order to excite your vanity, from which may God preserve you, but to let you know by his last words, the esteem and affection that holy man had for you." Nothing could be more glorious for the deceased than the eulogy of such a man as M. Souart, who was a holy priest, and singularly enlightened in the ways of God.

Souart and Perrot, who authorized her to expose it for public veneration. She deposited it in the little wooden shed she had erected after her first return from France, expecting to be able to place it more honorably in the large chapel, that was to be built of stone, and decently ornamented.

At Quebec, the barometer of piety, if I may be excused so bold a metaphor, held at the same level as that of Montreal, and he would be greatly deceived who, having read only the history of the early years of the latter city, should despair of finding in the centre of edification founded by Champlain, men worthy to rank with Queylus and Lemaître, with Souart and Vignal, with Closse and Maisonneuve, and women who might vie with Marguerite Bourgeoys, with Jeanne Mance or with Jeanne Leber.

Despite the sorrow and humiliations she had already experienced regarding this chapel, she set to work again with renewed energy to effect its completion, but in order to proceed with suitable solemnity, M. Souart ordered a solemn procession to be made to the place, on the 29th of June, 1673, being the Feast of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul.