Religion

From colonial times, Belgians have participated in Roman Catholic missionary work in Canada. Recollets of the Franciscan order were the first to evangelize the “upper country” around the Great Lakes in the early seventeenth century. They also laboured in the parishes of New France, served as chaplains at military posts in the interior, and ministered to fishermen and Micmac on the Gaspé peninsula. The Belgian Recollets Zénobe Membré, Louis Hennepin, Luc Buisset, and Maxime Le Clercq accompanied René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle in search of the Mississippi River. Hennepin’s voluminous travel accounts were widely read and greatly influenced European opinion concerning the New World. Chrestien Le Clercq of Bapaume developed a system of writing for the Micmac of the Gaspé and also composed an authoritative history of the early Recollet mission, Premier établissement de la foy dans la Nouvelle-France (1691).

Another religious order that played an important role in New France, and that included several Belgian members, were the Jesuits. Philippe Pierson ministered to the Huron tribes on the Upper Great Lakes and to the Sioux for almost two decades, and François de Crespieul laboured among the Montagnais on the north shore of the St Lawrence. In the eighteenth century, Jean-Baptiste Tournois presided over the mission to the Iroquois at Sault-Saint-Louis (Kahnawaké). A long-time missionary to the Huron at Detroit, Pierre-Philippe Potier served native and French parishioners at the site of present-day Windsor until his death in 1781. During his brief term as fourth bishop of Quebec in the 1730s, Pierre-Herman Dosquet, a native of Liège, attempted to bring order into parochial finances, enforce proper discipline on parish priests, reform monastic rules, eradicate the brandy traffic with natives, and raise educational standards.

In 1821 Abbé Charles Nerinckx recruited nine candidates at Mechelen for missions in the northwest, among them Pierre-Jean De Smet, a Jesuit who in 1845–46 undertook missionary journeys into the Kootenay region and as far north as Fort Edmonton and Jasper House. Another pioneer missionary was Auguste-Joseph Brabant. After learning the Wakashan tongue of the Hesquiat, who lived on northern Vancouver Island, he established a mission among them in the 1870s. During his many years of labour, he became an authority on the history and customs of these people.

Among the Belgian and Dutch priests brought out by the first bishop of Vancouver Island, Modeste Demers, was Charles-John Seghers of Gent, who became diocesan administrator in 1871 and succeeded Demers as bishop two years later. He extended the Church’s work to native communities as far north as Yukon and established educational and charitable institutions for the diocese. Seghers was succeeded at Victoria by Jean-Baptiste Brondel from Mechelen, who is remembered for having decreed that all missionary work, whether with natives or Europeans, would be conducted in English. These bishops laid the foundations of an enduring Catholic presence on the Pacific coast. Their present-day successor, Remi DeRoo, who comes from a Flemish community in Manitoba, is well known as one of the most progressive voices in the Canadian Catholic Church.

The first Belgian members of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate arrived at Lac La Biche in present-day Alberta in 1874. A decade later Leonard Van Tighem began teaching the Blackfoot at a residential school south of Calgary as well as serving three pioneer communities. Transferred to Lethbridge in 1888, he later served at Taber, where he laid the foundations of a school of agriculture and showed ranchers how to grow fruits and vegetables. During the next century, at least forty-six other Belgian Oblates devoted their lives to native and isolated European communities. They taught in boarding-schools for native children, composed dictionaries and grammars of native languages, and evangelized over a vast territory. Charles Choque, a Walloon, worked for many years among the Inuit and wrote two books about his heroic confrères, Kajualuk and Joseph Béliard, pêcheur d’hommes.

Other religious orders from Belgium, such as the Priests of the Sacred Heart, the La Salette Congregation, and the Congregation of the Brothers of Good Works, came to work among their compatriots or in new fields of church activity, but they found an undercurrent of opposition to “foreign intrusion.” As early as 1899, British Columbians had indicated that they did not want another Belgian prelate, and the Quebec hierarchy in 1903 informed Rome that it did not wish to have French or Belgian bishops. Belgian missionaries concluded that Anglo-Saxon racism and French-Canadian nationalism were unwitting allies in excluding them.

In 1879 Belgian Redemptorists took over the healing centre and shrine at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré from their American co-religionists. They conducted Advent and Lenten preaching missions throughout Quebec and soon extended their activities to other communities in western Canada in response to an invitation from the archbishop of Saint-Boniface. Father Achille Delaere arrived from Flanders to minister to the Ukrainians, a task that he realized would eventually lead to the Catholic Eastern Rite and Church Slavonic rather than Latin. In 1901 he and four companions were assigned to open a monastery in Yorkton. Other Redemptorists or Basilians were put in charge of Ukrainian parishes such as Komarno in Manitoba and Ituna in Saskatchewan. Delaere launched a modest Ukrainian-language church paper, Holos Spasytelia (Redeemer’s Voice; Yorkton, Sask., 1933– ). The Belgians began to retire from this pioneer work as Ukrainian Canadians joined the priesthood.

Flemish communities in southwestern Ontario had benefited from the proximity of Belgian clergy in the United States. The diocese of Detroit, where many Belgians lived, had been erected in 1833, and it had a succession of bishops and administrators of Belgian origin, who paid attention to the needs of the Flemings, including those in Canada. The Fathers van Scheut, as members of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Mission Society were popularly known, came regularly to minister, as did the Dutch Priests of the Sacred Heart in London. Franciscan friars at Chatham also took a special interest in parishes with a concentration of Flemings. In 1927 Capuchin monks opened a monastery in Blenheim and were given a special mission to serve Dutch and Flemish Catholics. The Capuchins found that many families were irregular in church attendance and gave little financial support to their parishes, probably because they were unaccustomed to the voluntarist tradition in Canada. Through the monks’ perseverance, many families were brought back into active church life, and separate schools received more enthusiastic support.

In Saint-Boniface Walloons worshipped with other francophones at the cathedral, while Flemings were assigned a chapel where Fathers De Munter and Van den Bossche cared for them. In 1917 Canada’s only Flemish parish was created in the Belgium Town section of Saint-Boniface, and ten years later it was assigned to Capuchins from Ontario. Full services, including catechism, confessions, sermons, and retreats, were offered in Flemish until 1935, when catechism was taught in English only, and 1955, when all sermons were given in English. The Capuchins in 1931 had agreed to open a small monastery at Toutes Aides, a community three hundred kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, from which they served not only Belgians but many other ethnocultural groups and native peoples in at least five mission stations. A number of Belgian monks came to Toutes Aides until 1972, when the charge was turned over to the Oblates.

Other Roman Catholic religious communities from Belgium have also made a contribution. At Oka in Lower Canada, three Trappist monks in 1862 started a monastery in an isolated community where they built a grist mill, sawmill, and cheese factory. Benedictine monks from the abbey of Saint-Wandrille arrived at Saint-Benoît-du-Lac on Lac Memphrémagog in 1912, led by Dom Joseph Pothier, internationally known for his restoration of the Gregorian chant in modern worship. Their abbey has become an important pilgrimage site. The Brothers of Mercy from Mechelen opened a boarding-school and agricultural college in Swan Lake, Manitoba, in 1919. Four years later they took over an agricultural orphanage at Huberdeau, founded by Marist Fathers. In 1949 Premonstratensians from Tongerloo built a monastery at Lacolle south of Montreal. Some of their monks served in parishes as far away as Alberta. Brothers of Our Lady of Lourdes in 1959 opened the Dom Bosco Home in Calgary for emotionally disturbed teenagers and later a private school for boys in Nelson, British Columbia.