CCHA Historical
Studies, 70 (2004), 48-70
The Maritimes Region and
the Building of
a Canadian Church: The
Case of the
Diocese of Antigonish
after Confederation
Mark
G. McGowan
The Catholic Church in Canada can be
characterized by both its national and regional natures. Since Confederation,
the ties of a common faith, the cohabitation of Catholics within a defined
geographical land mass, and the shared experience of governance under a common
federal state has created the impression of a national Catholic Church from
sea to sea. In both history and in our own times, however, the reality of
the Canadian church has resembled more what J.M.S. Careless once described of
Canada as a collection of “limited identities.”1 It
is in the country’s regions where the shared doctrinal, magisterial, and
canonical norms meet the complex web of local cultures, creating, in the
process, distinctive expressions of the Catholic faith. Each of the regions of
Canada – the Northern Territories, Western Prairie, the Pacific slope, Ontario,
Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces – contain Catholic communities made
distinct from one other by historical experience, language, the presence or
absence of an ethno-cultural mosaic, Catholic-non-Catholic relations, the
political climate between religion and the state, and by various levels of
economic expectations and development.
Until
the recent publication of Terence J. Fay’s A History of Canadian Catholics,
there was little attempt by historians of the Church to move beyond regionally
based micro-studies, biographies, or diocesan histories. Moreover, linguistic
divisions have created as veritable a “two solitudes” in Canadian Catholic
historiography as they have for the writing of Canadian history generally.
Given the prominence of regional distinctions in the Canadian Church, which are
currently institutionalized in such bodies as regional conferences of
bishops, one is left to wonder what kind of links did Catholics forge between
regions in order to fashion a broad concept of a Canadian church that was more
than just a nominal veneer over a patchwork of regional churches?
While
the Confederation moment, in 1867, was not considered a “defining” event for
the Churches in the newly assembled Canadian provinces and territories, the
creation of the Canadian state did have a long term influence on the growth and
development of the Catholic Church in Canada. There had been loose links
between dioceses in British North America, prior to Confederation. When the
ecclesiastical province of Quebec was created by Rome, with British assent, in
1844, the Maritime dioceses and vicariates apostolic were excluded from
Quebec’s metropolitan control since they were defined, unlike Quebec, as non-conquered
territory in which the state had no right to interfere with dissentient
religious groups. Rome, however, did advise the Maritime bishops to attend
synods and councils of the Ecclesiastical Province.2 Each colonial church lived with a comfortable
degree of autonomy, running local affairs without much of an eye to
pan-colonial or, later, pan-Dominion co-operation or co-ordination. With the
expansion of Canadian settlement into the western and northern frontiers, and
with the rise of Catholic immigration and its emergent challenges in the late
nineteenth century, however, it was clear to Church authorities west of the St.
Lawrence that the establishment of the institutional structures of Catholicism
could not be left to the limited resources of missionaries and members of
religious orders. By necessity, central and western Canadian Catholics would
have to look to more established dioceses in Quebec and Atlantic Canada for
episcopal and pastoral leadership to give structure, imagination, and energy to
create new dioceses, in addition to securing workers to build and develop the
infrastructure of Catholic Christian communities: schools, health care, and
social services. The political, social, and economic development of Canada as a
nation necessitated that there develop among Catholic leaders a more
trans-regional approach to looking at their Church in Canada.
The
existing body of historical micro-studies, church documents, and the routinely
generated data from central and western Canadian sources suggest that church
leaders in English-speaking Canada looked to the East for their answers. The
Diocese of Antigonish, in eastern Nova Scotia, provides a sample laboratory in
which one can assess the creation of links between “church regions” in the post
Confederation period, and the contributions made by the Maritimes’ church to a
more broadly defined sense of “Canadian” Catholicism by the mid-twentieth
century. Called the Diocese of Arichat, until renamed in1886, the Diocese of
Antigonish had been created in 1844, primarily to solve the impasse between the
Scots dominance in eastern Nova Scotia, and the Irish power base in Halifax,
that hampered the administration of the then Vicariate Apostolic of Nova
Scotia. Under the leadership of Bishops William Fraser (1844-51), Colin Francis
McKinnon (1852-77), and John Cameron (1877-1910), Antigonish grew into one of
the highest populated dioceses outside of Quebec.3 The influence of the Diocese of Antigonish on
the building of inter-regional linkages was profound in several areas: the
intervention of Antigonish bishops, clergy and laity in national affairs; the
out-migration of Antigonish priests, religious, and laypersons; the
transplanted ideas of Catholic higher learning; and the creation of national
voluntary and charitable associations. The men and women of the Diocese of
Antigonish helped to construct a “pan-Canadian network” within the Church in
Anglophone Canada, which served as a conduit for future waves of Catholic
emigrants, ideas, and leadership. Through the social and intellectual pathways
cut by this network, with the conspicuous influence of Maritimers,
English-speaking Catholics created a counterweight to the francophone dominated
Quebec church, perhaps giving body to Bishop John Cameron’s quip that Catholics
endeavoured to “ride the Dominion horse.”4
In the
half century after Confederation the Bishops of Antigonish and those elevated
to the episcopacy from the Diocese were prominent among the builders of the
church network in English-speaking Catholic Canada. Bishop John Cameron, with
his pronounced influence in the
Vatican, his friendship with John Sparrow David Thompson, Canada’s first Roman
Catholic Prime Minister, and his ability to move the electorate at critical
times for the Conservative Party, brought considerable national attention to
eastern Nova Scotia. Cameron’s scholastic achievement at the Urban College in
Rome in the 1850s, followed by his tenure as professor and rector at St.
Francis Xavier College, and his demonstrable ultramontane ecclesiology, earned
him the respect and trust of the Roman Curia. On three occasions Rome
designated Cameron as its “Apostolic Commissioner” to settle disputes in the
Church in British North America.5 His high regard in Rome, in addition to his
close Tory connections at a time of national conflict over separate schools,
the Jesuit’s Estates, and French Canadian clerico-nationalism, made Cameron’s
allegiance an asset for priests, prelates, and politicians.
Cameron’s
episcopal colleagues beat a path to his door. Although he confided to John
Thompson that he was loath to “interfere” in “matters outside my diocese unless
my legitimate superiors there ask me,” his rule was rarely the practice. In
1885, his influence was sought by Archbishop
Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau to hasten the division of the Archdiocese of
Quebec.6 Shortly thereafter, Archbishop Thomas Duhamel of Ottawa asked him to
influence the appointment of Duhamel’s friend as Thompson’s secretary at the
Department of Justice, which prompted Cameron to respond “I shall at the same
time remind him that the choice of a private secretary, like that of a wife,
ought to be left to whom it most concerns.”7 Obviously the Bishop of Antigonish was not
over-awed by the attention and was as free with his opinions among his
episcopal colleagues as he was with his subordinates. Similarly in 1894, when
Bishop Paul Laroque of Sherbrooke and Father Albert Lacombe travelled to
Antigonish to secure Cameron’s support for a petition to demand remedial
legislation to restore Manitoba’s Catholic schools – one of the first
pan-Canadian episcopal endeavours – the Bishop of Antigonish signed only after
he had given Lacombe a stern lecture on the French-Canadian mistreatment of
Prime Minister Thompson.8
The
controversy surrounding Manitoba schools perhaps reveals both the high
watermark of Cameron’s influence in the Canadian church, and perhaps the nadir
of his ability to influence the majority of voters. The fact that an episcopal
delegation was sent to win his support testifies to his perceived influence,
notwithstanding that he led the most populous Catholic diocese outside of
Quebec.9 In the bitter election of 1896, however, he failed to deliver his
riding to the Conservatives, despite his public demands to Catholic voters and
his instructions to his priests to follow his lead. Cameron was weakened in
that he no longer had Thompson as his incumbent, and the local Liberal (Colin
MacIsaac) was also committed to the restoration of Manitoba’s Catholic schools.10 To make matters worse, Cameron’s overt
partisanship and intervention in the campaign drew a stern reprimand from Rome.11 In 1900, Cameron’s power was compromised
further when the Apostolic Delegate was asked by parishioners at Heatherton to
release them from Cameron’s interdict, his retribution for the parish’s
resistance to him during the election.12 The defeat of the federal Conservatives in
1896, and Cameron’s rebuke from voters and from Rome, marked an end to a period
when the Diocese of Antigonish, through its bishop and political
representatives, was a conspicuous player in national ecclesiastical and
political affairs.
Cameron’s
successor, James Morrison (1912-1950), neither sought nor inherited his
predecessor's national prominence in the affairs of church and state. In a
Canadian church that was growing in both dioceses and numbers of adherents, and
with the increased secularization of Canadian politics, it was less likely that
the Cameronesque style was either possible or desirable. Morrison’s national
distinction was earned less by his political assertions than by his example of
local leadership during the Great War, from 1914 to1918, when he rallied his
diocesan clergy and laity to the aid of the British Empire in its struggle
against Germany and the Central Powers.13 By autumn 1916, Nova Scotia had supplied 8,825
Catholics volunteers for the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and by war’s end the
Diocese of Antigonish itself had sent in excess of 4,500 Catholic men and
women, including five of its priests as chaplains, 23 medical doctors, and 35
nursing sisters.14
In
December 1915, the Catholic press released the recruitment figures for Cape
Breton County which revealed that nearly half of the volunteers (47.9%) were
Roman Catholic, most of whom were Canadian-born. The Northwest Review of
Winnipeg described the Nova Scotian patriotism as a “good showing,” while the New
Freeman of Saint John called it “a magnificent record.”15 Reports of Acadian enlistment, the St.FX
Hospital Unit and collections for Victory Bonds and Army Huts, prompted
Catholic prelates and journalists to hold up eastern Nova Scotia as a clear
example of Catholic loyalty to Canada and the Empire. For Canada’s Catholic
leaders, Morrison’s unabashed patriotism was a relief, coming at a time when
Canadian Imperial nationalists had reason to doubt the levels of loyalty of
Catholics in Quebec, in some Ukrainian settlements, and among a pocket of
sympathizers with the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein Party. Its wartime
contributions gave the Diocese of Antigonish a national prominence among
Catholic and non-Catholic Canadians rarely seen before or since.
The
Canadian Catholic church that embraced the war effort was clearly a church in a
state of transition. At the turn of the twentieth century, Canada's 31 bishops
were generally youthful, Canadian-born, and inexperienced in episcopal office.16 They governed a church characterized by five
distinctive regions: the institutionally well-established Celtic and Acadian
dioceses of the Maritimes; the francophone bastion of Quebec; the Ontario
church notable for its predominantly Irish lineage and its minority status in
an acknowledged “Protestant” province; the mission territory of the west and
north, comprised principally of First Peoples under the watchful eye of
European and Quebecois priests of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate; and finally
the churches of the Pacific slope, which were developing in a similar fashion
to the mission churches of the Prairies and north, while creating urban church
cultures in the lower Fraser Valley and on Vancouver Island.17 Over the next three decades, however, the rapid
industrialization and urbanization of central Canada, the massive immigration
from Europe and the United States, the politics of language, and the effects of
global warfare transformed the face of the Canada’s church. In this period the
prominence of Maritime churchmen would be exploited on the national stage.
The
demise of the last of the nineteenth-century bishops, precipitated far more
than the shuffling of mitred heads on Canada's ecclesiastical map. The creation
of new episcopal sees and the election of anglophone Canadians to what had been
essentially francophone bishoprics, altered the regionalism so evident at the
turn of the century. The most dramatic turn of events was the consecration of
Maritimers to episcopal sees west of the Ottawa River. By 1920, the dioceses of
Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Toronto were under the
control of Maritimers.18 By the 1930s one could add Regina and Pembroke to
this group. The election of these anglophones had a number of consequences:
first, the power of the French Canadian hierarchy was virtually proscribed
outside of Quebec; second, the rise of Maritime-born bishops helped dissolve
the regional barriers in the Church in English Canada, creating new
opportunities for a pipeline of both ideas and personnel from East to West.
Maritime bishops capitalized on this opportunity and established a Catholic
“network” of personnel, religious institutions, and voluntary associations,
that provided the foundation for a more “Canadian” Catholic church, or perhaps
more accurately, a power base for English-speaking Catholics. Underscoring this
development was the development of a common concern among Canada’s
English-speaking Catholics that, outside of Quebec, the future of the Catholic
faith was best secured through the medium of the English language, and by the
leadership of “progressive” Anglo-Celtic men who understood the ethos of
English Canada.19
The
Diocese of Antigonish played a prominent role in the reshaping of the
leadership of the Canadian Church in the twentieth century. No stranger to the
question of leadership, the Diocese had actually “exported” its first bishop in
1881, when Father Ronald R MacDonald of Malignant Brook was selected the Bishop
of Harbour Grace, Newfoundland.20 After his appointment, thirteen other men of
the diocese were called upon to serve as bishops in Canada and the United
States, and in some cases serve several dioceses.21 Most notable in this regard was Neil McNeil, a
native of Hillsboro, who served the dioceses of St. George’s Newfoundland
(1895-1910), Vancouver (1910-12) and Toronto (1912-1934).22 Although McNeil, like most of his expatriate
colleagues, was of Scottish descent, Antigonish’s Irish and Acadian communities
were also represented. Georges-Leon Landry of Pomquet, for example found
himself in the frozen “shield country” of Northern Ontario, when serving the
largely francophone Diocese of Hearst (1946-52), while Moses Elias Kieley of
Margaree ended up part of the American “Hibernarchy,” serving as Bishop of
Trenton, New Jersey (1934-1940) and in the prestigious archiepiscopal see of
Milwaukee (1940-53).23 Finally it should also be noted that at least two
Canadian dioceses have known little other than episcopal leadership from
Antigonish expatriates: since 1944, the Diocese of Charlottetown has been
served by at least four Antigonish men, and, from 1938 to 1964 and 1973 to
1999,and until the appointment of Thomas Collins, the Archdiocese of Edmonton
had been directed by Antigonish men.
It was
the first generation of these expatriate bishops, however, who, with fellow
expatriate bishops from New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and sometimes
southern Ontario, created a more cohesive anglophone Catholic network from
Atlantic to Pacific. A native of Port Hood and a professor at St. Francis
Xavier University, Bishop Alexander “Sandy” MacDonald of Victoria was the first
Maritimer to be appointed to a diocese west of Toronto. Although only listed as
“dignus” on the terna, in 1906 Rome selected him, in part, because of his fame
as a theologian and professor, but more because of the weakness of local
candidates and a general feeling of anger among western secular priests at the
prospect of serving under a bishop chosen from the Oblate order.24 While his short tenure in Victoria was plagued
by financial troubles and a monumental battle against the taxation of Church
property by the city of Victoria, MacDonald established important lines of
communication between eastern colleagues and the frontier, and he hastened the
election of more Maritimers to western sees.25
In
1910, MacDonald orchestrated the election of close friend and St. Francis
Xavier alumnus, Neil McNeil as Archbishop of Vancouver, and for a brief time
the Church in southern British Columbia was under “Antigonish rule.” McNeil’s
arrival signalled the integration of the West into an English-speaking Catholic
sphere of influence. One terna, proposed by Emile Bunoz, OMI, the Apostolic
Vicar of the Yukon, insisted on yet another Oblate bishop for Vancouver. An
alternative terna was suggested by “Sandy” MacDonald, who insisted that secular
priests be in control of the territory and he placed McNeil’s name first on the
list of candidates.26 McNeil’s election, strongly supported by the
English-speaking Catholic hierarchy,27 was the first in a series of episcopal takeovers
of Oblate controlled sees by English-speaking Catholic Maritimers. For his own
part, McNeil encouraged St.Francis Xavier University alumni to come to BC for
work as teachers and he made attempts to create new parishes and establish
Catholic services, some of which were underwritten by Catholic Church
Extension. He even had plans to increase “Catholic influence” by means of
founding what he termed “a St.FX in the West.”28
McNeil’s
contribution, however, would be measured less by his work in Vancouver than by
his influence as Archbishop of Toronto. Acknowledged by Rome and the Canadian
hierarchy as the most influential archiepiscopal see outside of Quebec,
Toronto offered McNeil the opportunity to act as a communications centre and
financial power linking Antigonish and Maritime sees with the Prairies and the
West coast. McNeil used his many “connections” in Nova Scotia, acquired from
decades of University, publishing, and episcopal work, to forge a substantial “Catholic
network” from East to West. Earlier in his career as a priest-professor, McNeil
had been editor of The Casket, a local Catholic newspaper. By the early
twentieth century The Casket had developed a national reputation; its
columns were reprinted by central and western Catholic papers, and, by the
1910s, its features on Catholic higher education and social action were praised
nationwide by Catholic leaders. In 1915, when McNeil searched for an editor of
Toronto’s The Catholic Register and Canadian Extension, he scooped up
Joseph Wall, a former editor of The Casket, whom he described as a
“clever writer,” and The Canadian Freeman of Kingston eulogized as “a
cultured Catholic gentleman.”29 As editor of the Register Wall was
conspicuous in the coverage he gave to national issues, including developments
at St. Francis Xavier University and social action that was percolating in the
Diocese of Antigonish.30
McNeil
had been brought to Toronto primarily to shepherd two fledgling projects: the
Catholic Church Extension Society and St. Augustine’s Seminary.31 Both institutions would become avenues whereby
Antigonish men and women – both clerical and lay – would make significant
contributions to the development of the Canadian Church. Church Extension, for
example, had been founded in 1908 as a society to bring financial assistance to
Canada’s home missions, to recruit clergy for the Canadian West, and to instill
an English-speaking Catholic presence among the “new” Catholic immigrants.32 Through McNeil’s influence as its Chancellor,
Extension was heavily promoted in the Diocese of Antigonish, to the extent that
by the 1920s the parishes of eastern Nova Scotia were among the chief
benefactors of the home missions. In 1918-1919, despite years of severe
recession, the Diocese of Antigonish led all other Canadian dioceses in their
support of home missionary activity through Catholic Church Extension.33 Both bishops Sandy MacDonald and James Morrison
eventually spent brief tenures on Extension’s Board of Governors, the latter
being enthusiastic enough to form chapters throughout the Diocese.34 Extension was one means of strengthening the
national Catholic network by linking the wealth of capital and people of
eastern Canadian Catholics to the pressing needs of the Church on the western
and northern frontiers.
More
significant to this national Catholic network were the efforts made by McNeil
and other expatriate-Maritime bishops to recruit Nova Scotian clergy to the
frontier dioceses. This recruitment was most pronounced from 1900 to 1950 when
these new western-Canadian dioceses witnessed rapid economic and urban growth
which was accompanied by a flood of foreign- and Canadian-born Catholic
settlers. While Oblate missionaries continued to expand their apostolate to
indigenous peoples,35 the secular clergy were expected to do the lion’s
share of the work in establishing parishes, social services, and Catholic
institutions for Euro-Canadian migrants. Faced by critical personnel shortages,
and lacking in mature academic institutions of their own,36 prelates such as John T. McNally in Calgary,
Henry O’Leary in Edmonton, and his successor J.H. MacDonald, looked eastward to
men they knew in their home dioceses, or to dioceses where there appeared to be
a surplus of young priests. O’Leary, in fact, had a formal pact with his
brother, the Bishop of Charlottetown, P.E.I.: seminarians were permitted exeats
from the Island only if they intended to go to Edmonton, an exclusiveness
resented by Bishop McNally in Calgary, himself an Islander.37
For
its own part, the Diocese of Antigonish appeared to be a natural nursery for
clergy. Its priests were generally well known in Canada because of their
wartime service, their experimentation in Catholic social service, or because
of the prominence and respect earned outside of Nova Scotia for such leaders as
McNeil or Sandy MacDonald.38 Some of this notoriety had been earned from
their education at St. Francis Xavier, and its insistence on a well-trained
cadre of faculty and a balanced programme of sciences and humanities.39 Secondly, between 1905 and 1925, the Diocese of
Antigonish had one of the best priest-layperson ratios in eastern Canada. Over
ninety per cent of active priests were seculars, and by 1919 with the
departure of the Trappists, priests serving the diocese were exclusively
secular. Each parish was fully staffed and the remaining priests served at the
University, in the First Nations’ missions, and at local Catholic institutions.
In 1911, for example, there were 909 Catholics for every secular priest in the
diocese – a lower ratio than such sees as Halifax, Saint John, Charlottetown,
and Toronto, dioceses which had smaller Catholic populations.40
This
recruitment and chain migration of priests from the Diocese of Antigonish was
also facilitated by Bishop Morrison’s decision to send some of his candidates
for training at St. Augustine’s Seminary in Toronto.41 In 1913, St. Augustine’s was erected as the
major seminary for the Archdiocese of Toronto, but was intended to serve all of
Canada’s English-speaking dioceses.42 In its formative decades it provided theological
and pastoral formation for seminarians from nearly every diocese in Canada, for
missionaries in the China Mission Society, and for a time, candidates for holy
orders in the Byzantine Catholic Rite.43 From 1913 to 1992, however, the Diocese of
Antigonish sent 113 students to St. Augustine’s.44 Of these, 42 attended during the episcopacy of
Neil McNeil, 1912-1934, underscoring the confidence that leaders in the Diocese
of Antigonish invested in their native son as the overseer of the priestly
formation of their young men. Of the 91 men who finished their studies and were
ordained, 25 (or over one quarter of these) chose to serve in a diocese or
apostolate other than that of Antigonish.45 This recruitment to other dioceses was
facilitated further when two of the seminary’s rectors, John T. Kidd (1913-25)
and Francis Patrick Carroll (1931-1936), were elevated to episcopal sees in the
West (Calgary); both men were able to assess the pool of talent among their
seminarians for their own needs and those of other Canadian bishops. Even
McNeil himself permitted the incardination of two Antigonish candidates into
Toronto.
For
their part, the young men of Antigonish had a number of incentives to serve
elsewhere. While there were some men who, because of poor discipline and
unsuccessful studies, looked to the Canadian West and Ontario as a last chance
for their vocation,46 most Antigonish men made their move for other reasons
less easy to trace. Undoubtedly, the work of the Catholic Church Extension
Society had succeeded in raising the consciousness of the Diocese of Antigonish
to the needs of the “frontier” church. With the need for vocations less
pressing at home, the “the desire to do something for the West,” as Bishop John
R. MacDonald recalled, appeared all the more attractive.47 Moreover, with so many Maritime-born prelates
serving west of the Ottawa River, young priests could readily identify familiar
faces in unknown Canadian territory. As for the life at St. Augustine’s, John
R. MacDonald himself identified it as not only a valuable centre for priestly
formation but as a place where young men could develop a spirit of “fellowship
and co-operation in Canada.” MacDonald frequently informed his uncle, Neil
McNeil, that English-speaking Catholics, particularly in the West, needed to
work together more effectively in areas of higher education and priestly formation.
This plea for Catholic unity was sufficient reason for him to apply to St.
Augustine’s as a professor in 1921.48
The
seminarians from Antigonish who decided to be incardinated in Ontario,
Prairie, and British Columbian dioceses were joined in the migration by
ordained men who had applied for excardination from the Diocese of Antigonish
after only a few years of service. Collectively, the presence of these
Antigonish priests was fundamental to the development of the English-speaking
Catholic leadership in the Diocese of Calgary and the Archdiocese of Edmonton.
In the former, roughly five percent of the secular priests of the diocese from
1913 to 1973, were natives of the Diocese of Antigonish.49 In Edmonton, however, the numbers of Antigonish
priests were even more significant. In a necrology of priests of the
Archdiocese, dated 1992, thirteen of the 110 priests listed were natives of
Antigonish, or approximately twelve per cent of the total. In the same period,
1912-1992, only the combined total for the all the dioceses of Ontario and the
Diocese of Charlottetown produced more priests than Antigonish for the
Archdiocese of Edmonton.50
What
is clear from the historical record is that these Antigonish priests, and
colleagues from the dioceses in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick helped
lay the parochial grid in Alberta and maintained it until such a time as
home-grown clergy assumed greater numerical representation and greater
influence. Perhaps more importantly, in Alberta and elsewhere in the West,
these Maritime priests provided an English-speaking Catholic network linking East
and West. At one level, they provided tangible links between the fledgling
western sees and the leaders, personnel, and Catholic institutions in the East.
At a deeper level, the Antigonish clerics offered a conduit for ideas, and as
graduates of St. Francis Xavier University, more specifically, they became a
means by which ideas of “co-operation” could spread. In one sense, the environment
of fellowship and unity, for which J.R. MacDonald had hoped, was gradually
being created in the Church in English Canada.51
This
living network of Catholic leadership, extending from Antigonish to central and
western Canada was by no means exclusive to secular clergy. Religious orders
were also active participants in the creation of these Catholic links from
coast to coast, particularly the Congregation of St. Martha, a group of religious women founded in the
Diocese of Antigonish and who were populated largely by local women. Based on
their distinguished service at St. Francis Xavier University, Catholic
institutions and leaders both within and outside of Nova Scotia frequently
requested the help of the Marthas.52 Their expansion outside of the Diocese was
directed along the growing Canadian Catholic “network.” In 1913, at the request
of Archbishop McNeil of Toronto, Mother Faustina and Sister St. Francis de
Sales established domestic services for the new St. Augustine’s Seminary.
Rector John T. Kidd praised their work to Dr. H.P. MacPherson of St Francis
Xavier as “considerable” and “most valuable” during the construction of the
seminary.53 Later, in 1917, the eight sisters at St. Augustine’s won high praise in
the assessment of the seminary for Rome: “Ces sont tous des bons chrétiens, de
bonnes réputation, et remplissent fidélement leurs devoirs.”54 Similarly, in 1960, Archbishop Lemieux of
Ottawa, tapped into the “network” and requested that his “friend” Bishop John
R. MacDonald help him to secure the Marthas “to look after domestic duties” at
the new St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary, in Ottawa.55
Expansion
into new territory for the Marthas also prompted them to diversify their
apostolate. Shortly after his own appointment to the see of Calgary, John Kidd
of St. Augustine’s invited the Marthas to establish a Catholic hospital at
Lethbridge, in Southern Alberta. The arrival of Sisters Francis Teresa Herrgott
and Mary Daniel MacLellan, in 1929, precipitated not only the establishment of
hospitals at Lethbridge and Banff, but the erection a school of nursing in
1953, and creation of several kindergartens and convents, in addition to the
provision of teaching sisters at local grade schools.56 The healthcare operation at Lethbridge
effectively became a beachhead for additional projects directed by the Marthas
in western Canada, including: St. Basil’s Catholic School, Lethbridge, in 1931;
the Mineral Springs Hospital at Banff, in 1930; parish ministry in Canmore,
Alberta, in 1934; St. Michael’s Hospital, in Broadview, Saskatchewan in 1936;
pastoral and educational work in Blairmore, Alberta, beginning in 1939; St.
Peter’s Hospital, in Melville, Saskatchewan, in 1940; and a host of smaller
educational and parochial apostolates in the West, including Kelowna, British
Columbia.57 The chain that had led the Marthas to the West is testimony to the
English-speaking Catholic network that had already been forged, linking the
Maritimes with the rest of the country. Cape Bretoner Neil McNeil had
commissioned the Sisters to run housekeeping services of the seminary in
Toronto; the rector of St. Augustine’s, J.T.Kidd valued the work of the Marthas
to such a degree he wanted them to help him build the social service
infrastructure in the Diocese of Calgary, when he became its Bishop. For their
part, the Marthas extended the network and gave it strength in the rural areas
and small towns of the West.
This
diversification into health care, teaching, and social service, both at home
and elsewhere in Canada, garnered the Marthas further prominence nationally.
Most notable was the seminal effort made by Mother Mary Faustina MacArthur and
Sister Mary Ignatius Floyd in establishing, in 1922, a Maritime Conference of
the Catholic Health Association of the United States and Canada, the first such
permanent conference in Canada.58 Such pioneer efforts to improve Catholic health
care and nurses’ training programmes ultimately led, in 1942, to the formation
of the Catholic Hospital Council of Canada, on whose national executive Mother
Mary Ignatius served.59 The vocational diversity of the Sisters of St. Martha
of Antigonish forms only one case of how Maritime religious, notably women,
penetrated different regions of Canada, while in the process not only taking
advantage of the connections provided by the Catholic network, but expanding
its web and building strength where the ties that bound were stretched thinly
on the frontier..
A
third force that moved along this pan-Canadian English-speaking Catholic
network was the transmission of ideas. As has been noted earlier, St. Francis
Xavier University provided a locus for theological and intellectual formation
for the Antigonish men and women who
left their homes and migrated along the Catholic network. After World War I,
under the leadership of Rector H.P. MacPherson, the University improved the
breadth of programmes, increased the endowment, elevated the quality of
teaching faculty, and had elected to remain aloof of a move to federate all of
the Province’s universities.60 In correspondence with his uncle, as early as 1921,
John R. MacDonald reported that the University was gaining prominence, but that
its People’s School was garnering “remarkable” fame throughout Canada, and
would have 150 registrants in the autumn.61 The “people’s school” was the leading wave of
what became the University’s Extension Program where ideas of “adult education”
and “co-operative economy” were developed and nourished by one time
Vice-Rector, Father Jimmy Tompkins, his cousin, priest-professor Moses Coady,
layman and alumnus, A.B. MacDonald, local clergy and lay leaders, and the
Sisters of St. Martha. In the words of Coady, the co-operative movement would
help to make people “masters of their own destiny.”62 In pursuit
of this ideal, he and his colleagues established local study clubs to increase
the literacy of lay Nova Scotians, to encourage leadership skills, and to
recognize education as one of the key elements to economic and social
improvement. With such skills in hand, “the people” could establish their own
co-operatives for fishing, farming, and retailing; they would be empowered to
bank at their own credit unions; they would discover co-operative means to
build and own their own homes; they would garner tools to market the fruits of
their own labours without the middlemen; and they would be renewed by the
establishment of community lending libraries.63
In the
mid-twentieth century, the nationwide “Catholic network” became a conduit for
the principles of this so-called Antigonish Movement, as the ideas of the
Movement’s principal institutions, the Tompkins’ “People’s School (1920),” the
Extension Department of St. Francis Xavier (1928), and eventually the Coady International
Institute (1959), were crucibles for Catholic social teaching, and won the
endorsement of several Canadian bishops.64 It was through the “Extension Department” that
Canadian and European varieties of social teaching met in dialogue: the Caisse
Populaire movement of Quebec, Acadian-based agricultural and fishing co-ops
in Prince Edward Island, the articulate if not radical writing of the Catholic
Register’s Henry Somerville (granted an honourary degree from St. Francis
Xavier in 1918), the social critique offered by Quadragesimo Anno
(1931), Prairie-based farm co-operatives, and the ideas generated by the
earlier co-operative experiments in the United Kingdom. Although considered
perhaps “pink” or “pseudo-socialist” by some Catholic observers at the time,
the social ideas generated at St. Francis Xavier, and applied in parishes from
Havre Boucher to Canso, became models of what John R. MacDonald termed the
Church’s “via media” between the extremes of capitalism and communism.65 It also drew other Canadians and non-Canadians
to Antigonish, in one sense partially fulfilling Jimmy Tompkins’ hope that St.
Francis Xavier would “be the land to which the rest of English-speaking
Catholics in Canada might look as unto the hills whence cometh great help.”66
The
Movement spread by means of two-way correspondence along the “Catholic
network.” Moses Coady contacted the Basilian Order at St. Michael’s College in
Toronto, and suggested that the University appeared “to offer the best
facilities for undertaking the creation of a department to prepare priests for
this most necessary work,” – leaders of social action.67 While nothing was established in the short
term, the writings of Henry Carr and the inspiration of the Antigonish Movement
soon engendered a flourish of co-operative activity and Young Catholic Worker
study groups at St. Michael’s. Coady himself, either through his writings or in
person, helped plant seeds of the Antigonish Movement throughout the Canadian
Church. In 1952, for instance, Bishop John Cody of London invited Coady to
survey his diocese, with the intent of making it the “show-place of social
Catholicism in central Canada.”68 In similar fashion, for his part, another
pioneer of the “Antigonish Movement,”69 John R. MacDonald, while Bishop of
Peterborough, Ontario, from 1943 to 1945, sent local priest, Francis Anthony
Marrocco to study “social principles” at the Catholic University of America. When
Marrocco returned he founded a labour school at Peterborough, and later, in
1949, after two years of study at the Extension Department of St.FX, he set up
the Institute of Social Action at St. Patrick”s College in Ottawa. For the next
six years, until 1955 when elected an auxiliary bishop of Toronto, Marrocco had
established co-operative groups in twelve Ontario cities.70 The Marrocco-MacDonald relationship offers
additional evidence how the Antigonish ideas spread along the “Catholic
network,” and broadened it.
Others
carried the ideas as well, including, Nova Scotia-born members of the Scarboro
Foreign Mission Society. Although more directed to missions abroad since their
founding by Monsignor John Mary Fraser in 1918, the Scarboro Fathers had strong
ties to St. Francis Xavier, and recruited locally. A large contingent of Nova
Scotia Scarboros served in China, before 195471 and, in 1980, 39 of the 150 priests who
remained in the order were from the Diocese of Antigonish and seven more from
other parts of the province.72 Ironically, Antigonish SFM recruits trained with
their friends and relatives at St. Augustine’s in Toronto, a circumstance made
possible when, in 1924, Bishops Neil McNeil, Michael F. Fallon, and Michael
O’Brien placed the Society under their episcopal care.73 By 1957, at the meeting of its Third General
Chapter, the Society encouraged seminary students to study social catechetical
doctrine and co-operatives, and invited older members to take social leadership
courses.74 As Scarboro priests moved within the Canadian network, assisting in
local parishes, or ultimately serving outside of Canada, they provided agency
to the ideas of Coady and others, enhancing the importance of Maritime
intellectual contributions to the formation of a sense of the “grass roots”
Church in Canada.
In
conclusion, this assessment of the role of the Diocese of Antigonish is not an
exercise in proving exceptionalism for this one eastern Canadian diocese. Rudimentary
evidence suggests that similar profiles could be constructed for neighbouring
dioceses in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Several of the Maritime
dioceses shared in the construction of a pan-Canadian English-speaking Catholic
network, and contributed personnel, ideas, and resources to programs and
specific projects in the fledgling, underdeveloped, frontier, or thinly
populated areas of the Church west of the Ottawa River. Antigonish and its men
and women offer one example of how the “network” was built and maintained. If
one were to describe specific contributions that might have a lasting value at
a national level, perhaps the Antigonish efforts provided three: first,
Maritimers demonstrated initiative to construct diocesan and parochial structures
that were in conformity to the Church canons as they knew them, both in theory
and how they had been actualized in their home diocese in eastern Nova Scotia.
Like the story of the Canadian western frontier itself, where structures of
governance, law, and order preceded the mass migrations of competing interests
(interests which when left unchecked had transformed the American frontier into
the “wild west”), Canadian Catholic churchman–many of whom were Maritimers –
pioneered and episcopal structure that “ordered” the Canadian church. In the
emerging regions of the Canadian church, principles of episcopal corporation at
the diocesan level and clerical control in the localities evolved slowly, often
coming to resemble more and more their eastern counterparts.
Maritimers
then filled these structures with values imported from their own region. The
coming of the Sisters of St. Martha reinforced the traditions of service – both
internal to the Church and beyond its walls – which has become a commonplace in
Catholic communities across the country. The distinctive Catholic hospitals,
social services, and social ministries of care that were evident in every
diocese in the East, providing a parallel Catholic universe to Protestant and
secular institutional counterparts in English Canada, soon became fixtures in
Catholic community life beyond the Ottawa and the Great Lakes. Ideas grounded
in an activistic reading of the Gospel, providing grassroots socio-economic
alternatives to the great ideological polarization of the day, traversed the
“network” and popularized names like Coady and concepts like co-operation
across Canada. Finally, the Maritimers from Antigonish who forged this
“network” also brought with them their priority to study. Bishops, religious, and
priests who graduated from St. Francis Xavier University sought to replicate
that institution where no institutions of Catholic higher learning existed.
Sisters willingly shifted their vocational emphasis from social service to
teaching, given the acute need for Catholic schools.
It is
difficult to define what a “national Canadian Catholicism” might look like,
given both the complexity of the Church in Canada, and the preference of
scholars to examine the Church in terms of regional, linguistic, sociological,
or gendered perspectives. Our collective exploration of the Church in Canada
has been as subject to as fragmented a historiography, and methodological
diversity, as the study of Canadian history itself. Nevertheless, from the
studies of regions can come the discovery of links, and emergence of
characteristics that have come to be valued by Catholics a mare usque ad
mare – this paper has indicated but three: respect for institutions, the
imperative of social service, and the high value placed on education. The irony
in this exercise, if indeed there is one, is that it is in the examinations of
Catholic life in the regions, in addition to a conscious effort at comparative
study, that we may come to a clearer understanding of what Dr. Fay means when
he says “The Canadian Catholic church offers an alternative and a coherent
vision of life in contrast to the civil
policies, commercial interest, and a purely secular outlook.”75
Table 1
Priest to Parishioner Ratios and
Population of Selected Dioceses, 1905-1925
|
|
ANTIG |
ST J |
CHR |
TOR |
LON |
KIN |
HAL |
|
1905 |
75000 |
58000 |
58000 |
65000 |
60000 |
42000 |
55000 |
|
ALL |
773 |
906 |
1000 |
739 |
750 |
750 |
733 |
|
SEC |
938 |
1289 |
1020 |
1161 |
938 |
857 |
1070 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1910 |
80000 |
60000 |
50000 |
70000 |
60000 |
43000 |
55000 |
|
ALL |
741 |
909 |
926 |
642 |
674 |
754 |
775 |
|
SEC |
909 |
1304 |
943 |
933 |
833 |
754 |
1196 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1915 |
87000 |
65000 |
48000 |
75000 |
65900 |
45000 |
55000 |
|
ALL |
798 |
823 |
857 |
532 |
637 |
790 |
809 |
|
SEC |
906 |
1226 |
857 |
773 |
637 |
790 |
1122 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1920 |
85341 |
65000 |
48207 |
85000 |
77000 |
45000 |
60000 |
|
ALL |
783 |
813 |
790 |
574 |
653 |
833 |
790 |
|
SEC |
829 |
1140 |
790 |
697 |
819 |
833 |
1091 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1925 |
86132 |
65000 |
45812 |
85000 |
67000 |
45000 |
53000 |
|
ALL |
736 |
670 |
705 |
497 |
489 |
738 |
616 |
|
SEC |
769 |
878 |
705 |
680 |
588 |
738 |
841 |
M.H. Wiltzius, The Official Catholic
Directory and Clergy List
(Milwaukee: 1906); (1911).
P.J. Kenedy, The Official Catholic Directory
NY, 1916, 1921, 1926.
ALL
= Total priests, secular and
religious
SEC
= Diocesan priests only
Antigonish (ANTIG); Saint John (STJ);
Charlottetown (CHR);
Toronto (TOR);
London (LON); Kingston
(KIN); Halifax (HAL).
This chart indicates the number of Catholic
parishioners per priest in several major Catholic sees in Eastern Canada
outside of Quebec. The chart offers the
total Catholic population and then the ratio of Catholics to all of the priests
in the diocese, and then the ratio of Catholics to secular priests only. In 1905, for example, Antigonish had one
priest for each 773 RCs, and one secular priest for each 938.
1 J. M.S. Careless, “Limited Identities in
Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 50 (March 1969): 1-10.
2 Lucien Lemieux, L’etablissement de la premier province
ecclesistique en Canada 1783-1844 (Montreal: Fides, 1968) 376-9, 457-70;
National Archives, Lord Stanley Papers, Summary of Roman-Catholic Archbishop
for North American Colonies, Appendix 1, Michael Power to Stanley, 27 September
1841.
3 The best necrology of clergy is A.A. Johnston, Antigonish
Diocese Priests and Bishops, 1786-1925, edited by Kathleen M. MacKenzie and
R.A. MacLean (Antigonish: Casket Printing and Publishing, 1994).
4 National Archives of Canada [hereafter NA], John S.
Thompson Papers, vol. 33, reel C-9238, p. 3368, Bishop Cameron to Thompson, 22
December 1885.
5 Roberto Perin, Rome in Canada: The Vatican and
Canadian Affairs in the Late Victorian Age (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1990), 52; Raymond MacLean, “John Cameron,” in Ramsey Cook, ed., Dictionary
of Canadian Biography XIII, 150-3. The best study of the bishop is R.A.
MacLean, Bishop John Cameron, Piety and Politics (Antigonish: Casket
Publishing, 1991).
6 NA, John S Thompson Papers, vol 37, Cameron to
Thompson, 15 April 1886, p. 3910. C-9238 and vol 137, Cameron to Thompson, 24
September 1891, p. 16793, c-9254.
7 NA, Thompson Papers, vol. 32, Cameron to Thompson, 16
November 1885, p.3200. C-9237.
8 NA, Thompson Papers, vol. 207, Cameron to Thompson,
30 April 1894, p. 26066.
9 Mark G. McGowan, “Rethinking Catholic-Protestant Relations
in Canada: The Episcopal Reports of 1900-1901,” CCHA Historical Studies
59 (1992): 11-32. Appendix B “Census of Dioceses in Canada, 1901.”
10 Paul Crunican, Priests and Politicians:
Manitoba Schools and the Election of 1896 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1974) 82, 291-2. NA, Cameron to Thompson, 4 December 1886, p. 4973. Also
P.B.Waite, The Man From Halifax: Sir John Thompson, Prime Minister
(Toronto; University of Toronto Press, 1985) chapters 10-11, 15 and 18.
11 Perin, Rome in Canada, 65. See also NA,
Wilfrid Laurier Papers, V, II, Pastoral 20 June 1896, p. 4359.
12 Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Apostolic Delegate,
Canada [hereafter ASV-DAC], 13.0, Antigonish; MacLean, “Cameron,” 152.
13 The Casket, 13 August, 1 October and 12
November 1914; 15 and 29 April, 12 August and 30 December 1915. For clerical
and episcopal support consult Catholics and the Diocese of Antigonish During
the Great War, 1914-1919 (Antigonish: St. Francis Xavier University Press,
n.d.; Charles G. Brewer, “The Diocese of Antigonish and World War I,”
(Unpublished MA Thesis, University of New Brunswick, 1975).
14 Diocese of Antigonish and the Great War, 37-40, 191, and 195. Archives of the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto [hereafter ARCAT], Neil McNeil Papers, John R.
MacDonald to McNeil, 22 October 1918, AP05.18.
15 New Freeman, 4 December 1915; Northwest
Review, 1 January 1916.
16 McGowan, “Rethinking,” 33.
17 Vincent McNally, The Lord’s Distant
Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British
Columbia (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press and Western Canadian
Publishers, 2000), passim.
18 Raymond Huel, “The Irish-French Conflict in
Catholic Episcopal Nominations: The Western Sees and the Struggle for
Domination Within the Church,” CCHA Study Sessions 42 (1975): 51-70.
19 Mark McGowan, “Toronto’s English-speaking
Catholics, Immigration and the Making of a Canadian Catholic Identity,
1900-30,” in Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz, eds., Creed and Culture: The
Place of English-speaking Catholics in Canadian Society, 1750-1930
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 204-45. Pasquale Fiorino,
“The Nomination of Bishop Fallon as Bishop of London,” CCHA Historical Studies
62 (1996), 43-4.
20 Andre Chapeau, et al. Canadian R.C. Bishops
1658-1979 (Ottawa: Research Centre in Religious History of Canada, Saint
Paul University, 1980).
21 St. George’s, Newfoundland (Neil McNeil,
1895-1910); Bathurst (Patrice Alexandre Chiasson, 1920-42); Charlottetown
(James A Boyle, 1944-54; Malcolm A. MacEachern 1955-70; James H. MacDonald;
Vernon Fougère, 1992-present); Edmonton (John Hugh MacDonald, 1938-1964; Joseph
Neil McNeil, 1973-1999); Hamilton (James H. MacDonald, auxiliary 1978); Hearst
(George-Leon Landry, 1946-52); Peterborough (John R. MacDonald, 1943-45);
Toronto (Neil McNeil, 1912-1934); Vancouver (Neil McNeil, 1910-1912); Victoria
(Alexander MacDonald, 1908-1923; John Hugh MacDonald, 1934-6); Milwaukee (Moses
Elias Kiley, 1940-53); Trenton (Moses Elias Kiley, 1934-40); Saint John
(Patrick Albert Bray (1936-1953).
22 Boyle, Pioneer in Purple, passim.
23 Le Droit, 30 decembre 1977; Catholic
Register 28 January 1978. Steven M. Avella, sds, “‘We will do our duty
...’: The World of Moses E. Kiley,” Salesianum (fall/winter 1985): 12-7.
24 ASV-DAC, 98.10, Augustus Dontenwill, OMI,
Bishop of New Westminster to Donatus Sbarretti, 19 July 1908. ASV, DAC 98.10,
L.N. Begin, Archbishop of Quebec to Sbarretti, 4 juillet 1908; ARCAT, Neil
McNeil Papers, Alexander MacDonald to McNeil, 11 May 1922, MN AP04.33 and
MacDonald to McNeil, 21 July 1923, MN AP04.04.
See also Charles MacDonald, “On Getting the Sack: Bishop Alexander
MacDonald’s Departure from Victoria,” Unpublished Paper delivered to the
Canadian Society of Church History, Calgary, 6 June 1994.
25 On the financial trouble see ARCAT, McNeil
Papers, MacDonald to McNeil, 15 October 1922 and Vincent J. McNally, “Fighting
City Hall: The Church Exemption Battle Between the City and the Diocese of
Victoria, 1896-1923,” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society
34 (October 1992): 149-72.
26 Archives of the Archdiocese of Ottawa, Charles
Gauthier Papers, Donatus Sbarretti to Gauthier, 14 August 1909. G1/3/11.
27 Ibid., Gauthier to Sbarretti, 8 November 1909,
G1/3/11.
28 Archives of St. Francis Xavier University
[hereafter ASFXU], Dr. H. P. MacPherson Papers, Administrator of the Diocese of
Antigonish, McNeil to MacPherson, 3 January 1911. See also The British
Columbia Orphan’s Friend (Historical Number, 1847-1914), 156 and Catholic
Register 24 May 1934 and Boyle, Pioneer in Purple, 107-24.
29 “The Lord,” Canadian Freeman, 26
September 1918; Boyle, Pioneer in Purple, 134-5.
30 Beaton Institute of Cape Breton Studies
Archives, [hereafter BIA], Tompkins Papers, MG 10, 2 file 1a, Tompkins to
Father Michael Gillis, 23 January 1917.
31 Catholic Register, 24 May 1934; Boyle, Pioneer
in Purple, 126; ASV-DAC, 91.7/1, Pellegrino Stagni to Cardinal De Lai,
Consistorial Congregation, Rome, 7964, 19 September 1911.
32 ARCAT, Catholic Church Extension Society
Papers, Box 1, Archbishop Henry O’Leary to McNeil, 24 June 1927. O’Leary is
requesting more priests. See also Mark George McGowan, “A Watchful Eye: The
Catholic Church Extension Society and Ukrainian Catholic Immigrants,
1908-1930,” in John S. Moir and C. Thomas McIntire, eds., Canadian
Protestant and Catholic Missions, 1820s-1960s (New York: Peter Lang, 1988),
222-43.
33 ARCAT, CCES Papers, Annual Report of the
Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada, 1919, 16. The diocesan
collection in Antigonish amounted to $5,477.28. Students at St.F.X donated
150.25 on their own. Catholic Register, 20 January 1920 and 27 January
1921.
34 ARCAT, McNeil Papers, J.R. MacDonald to McNeil,
23 July 1916, AP05.06; Archives of the CCES, Minutes Book, Annual Meeting 11
April 1923 and Annual Meeting 7 May 1924. Archives of the Diocese of Antigonish
[herafter ADA, James Morrison Papers, Outgoing Correspondence, #3187, Morrison
to Neil McNeil, 1 May 1916.
35 Raymond Huel, Preaching the Gospel to the
Indians and the Metis (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1996).
36 ARCAT, McNeil Papers, MacDonald to McNeil, 29
September 1921 and 24 December 1922.
37 ARCAT, McNeil Papers, John R MacDonald to
McNeil, 1 July 1923. MN AP05.44.
38 BIA, Tompkins Papers, M 10-2, 1a. Tompkins had
an extensive correspondence with clergy and religious across North America.
39 James D. Cameron, “Erasing Forever the brand of
social inferiority: St. Francis Xavier University and the Highland Catholics of
Eastern Nova Scotia,” CCHA Historical Studies 59 (1992): 49-64 and
William X Edwards, “The MacPherson-Tompkins Era at St. Francis Xavier
University,” CCHA Report 20 (1953): 49-66. Also James Cameron For the
People: A History of St. Francis Xavier University (Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 91-6.
40 Official Catholic Directory and Clergy List,
1911. (Milwaukee: M.H. Wiltzius and Co., 1911). See Appendix I.
41 Traditionally candidates for the priesthood in
the Diocese attended a variety of major seminaries: Laval (Quebec), Grand
Seminaire (Montreal), Holy Heart (Halifax), and the Urban College (Rome). In
1909, Father Ronald MacDonald of Reserve Mines reported that there were at
least nineteen men serving in the Diocese who had attended the Missionary
College of the Propaganda Fide in Rome. ASV-DAC, 3.6, Father Ronald MacDonald
to Donatus Sbarretti, 14 February 1909. See also Archives of the Propaganda
Fide, Urban College of the Propaganda Fide, Student Files, 1829-1922 (copies at
NA MG 17 A25.
42 Catholic Register, 13 February and 6
June 1913; ARCAT, St. Augustine’s Seminary Papers, Box 1, Neil McNeil to
Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda Fide, 20 October 1917; Box 2, Michael Moyna
to McNeil, 15 May 1916; Judge Kelly Papers, Copy of McNeil’s Letter to the
People of the Archdiocese of Toronto, 1914.
43 ARCAT, St. Augustine’s Seminary Papers, Box 1,
Le Seminaire de St. Augustin à Toronto, 2-7.
44 Archives of St. Augustine’s Seminary (hereafter
ASAS), Enrolment Register, 1913-1993.
45 ASAS, Ibid. Also determined by the nominal roll
in Karen M. Booth, ed., The people cry–‘Send us priests’: The First
Seventy-Five Years of St. Augustine’s Seminary in Toronto, 1913-1988
(Toronto: St. Augustine’s Seminary Alumni Association, 1988), 41-60.
46 ASAS, Enrolment Register.
47 ARCAT, McNeil Papers, J.R. MacDonald to Neil
McNeil, 29 September 1921, MN AP05.33.
48 Ibid. Also MacDonald to McNeil, 4 December
1922, MN AP05.39 and 24 December 1922, MN AP05.40 and 1 July 1923, MN AP05.44.
49 M.B. Venini Byrne, From the Buffalo to the
Cross: A History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary (Calgary: Calgary
Archives and Historical Publishers, 1973), 444-93. The list includes Ronald
Beaton, James Alexander McGillivray, Patrick Francis Beaton, Colin Francis
Ross, Gregory Alexander MacLellan, Denis Egan Fleming, John Alexander
MacLellan, and William Francis Stephenson.
50 Edward F. Purcell, Priests of Memory
[Edmonton: by the author, 1991]. See also Raymond A. MacLean, “The History of
the Catholic Church in Edmonton,” (MA Thesis, University of Alberta, 1958),
131a-131b, fn 17. Archbishop O’Leary recruited twenty priests from the East
during his tenure, three of which were from the Diocese of Antigonish.
51 ARCAT, McNeil Papers, J.R. MacDonald to McNeil,
14 June 1921, AP05.32.
52 Sarah MacPherson, csm, “Religious Women in Nova
Scotia: A Struggle for Autonomy. A Sketch of the Sisters of St. Martha of
Antigonish, Nova Scotia, 1900-1960,” CCHA Historical Studies 51 (1984):
90.
53 ASAS, Sisters of St. Martha Papers, SAS S01,
Msgr J.T. Kidd to MacPherson, 16 July 1913.
54 ARCAT, St. Augustine's Papers, Box 1, “Le
Seminaire de St. Augustin à Toronto,” 7. Booth, The people cry, 32. The
seven new members included: Sister Teresa Landry, Mary Alphonsus MacLellan,
Mary Jovita MacArthur, Mary Remigius MacArthur, Mary Theodore Sampson, Mary
Dorothy Beaton, and Mary Andrew MacDonald. Sister Francis de Sales had returned
to Antigonish.
55 Templar (Yearbook of St. Pius X High
School, Ottawa) 1976-1977.
56 Byrne, From the Buffalo to the Cross,
415-7.
57 James Cameron, “And Martha Served”: A
History of the Sisters of St. Martha, Antigonish, Nova Scotia (Halifax:
Nimbus Publishing, 2000), 105-29.
58 Andre Cellard and Gerald Pelletier, Faithful
to a Mission: Fifty Years With the Catholic Health Association of Canada,
trans. by David R. Miller (Ottawa: Catholic Health Association of Canada,
1990), 15-7.
59 Ibid., 33 and 46.
60 Cameron, For the People..., 196-204.
61 ARCAT, McNeil Papers, MacDonald to McNeil, 4
June 1921, AP05.31A. The work of Hugh P. MacPherson and James J. Tompkins is
sketched in Edwards, “The MacPherson-Tompkins Era,” 49-66 and Laurence K.
Shook, Catholic Post-secondary Education in English-speaking Canada: A
History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 81-4.
62 Jim Lotz and Michael R. Welton, Father
Jimmy: The Life and Times of Jimmy Tompkins (Wreck Cove, Cape Breton Island:
Breton Books, 1997), 35-55; Moses M Coady, Masters of Their Own Destiny: The
Story of the Antigonish Movement and Adult Education Through Economic
Cooperation (New York: Harper & Publishers, 1939), 139-53 and 163-5.
63 Cameron, “For the People”...., 218-31.
64 ASFXU, H. P. MacPherson Papers, Neil McNeil to
MacPherson, 16 November 1933. McNeil indicates the support of Archbishop Peter
Monahan of Regina as well. ARCAT, McNeil papers, J.J.Tompkins to McNeil, 3
March 1925, AP07.52. The letter indicates Sandy MacDonald, then titular bishop
of Hebron, was giving a course at Canso. For an indication of criticism see
Moses M Coady, Masters of their Own Destiny (1939).
65 ARCAT, McNeil Papers, MacDonald to McNeil, 24
September 1925.
66 BIA, J.J. Tompkins Papers, MG 10, 2 1a,
Tompkins to McNeil, 22 February 1918 and McNeil to Tompkins, 17 December 1917.
67 Archives of the Diocese of London, Credit
Unions File, Moses Coady to T.O.Boyle, 30 October 1931. For more on the
application of this proposal at St. Michael’s see Brian F. Hogan, CSB, “Ivory
Tower and Grass Roots: the Intellectual Life and Social Action in the
Congregation of St. Basil, Archdiocese of Toronto, 1930-1960,” in Mark G.
McGowan and Brian P. Clarke, eds., Catholics at the Gathering Place:
Historical Essays on the Archdiocese of Toronto, 1841-1891 (Toronto:
Canadian Catholic Historical Association, 1993): 255-73.
68 Hogan, 268. ARCAT, McNeil Papers, J.J. Tompkins
to McNeil, 24 October 1931, AP04.81. This letter indicates Coady was on route
to the dioceses of Alexandria and Toronto for a lecture tour.
69 Catholic Register, 5 June 1945.
70 Edgar J. Boland, From the Pioneers to the
Seventies: A History of the Diocese of Peterborough, 1882-1975
(Peterborough: Maxwell Review, 1976), 113-4.
71 The China Missions were well publicized in
Antigonish because Fraser had enroled his first Chinese recruit, Paul Peter Kam
at St.FX and because many of the parish schools in the diocese subscribed to China,
the official publication of the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society. See the
reports from Port Hood and North Sydney in China 22 (May 1941). Early
recruitment figures are available in Grant Maxwell, Assignment at Chekiang:
71 Canadians in China, 1902-1954 (Scarborough: Scarboro Foreign Mission
Society, 1982), appendix A.
72 Archives of the Scarboro Foreign Mission
Society (ASFMS), Personnel Records. The author would like to thank archivist
Robert Cranley SFM for his co-operation. The figure of 46 is derived from
Maxwell, p. 21. In 1957 the Society established a Centre and residence for
vocations at Antigonish. It is not
surprising that 26 local ordinations for the Society date from the
establishment of this Mission centre.
73 Maxwell, 65. Boyle, 177.
74 Acts of the Third General Chapter, 1959,
II/3/Instructions 30 and 33. See also the statement of Father Jack McIvor in Scarboro
Missions 63 (September 1982). For a personal reflection on the SFM see
Harvey Steele, Dear Old Rebel: A Priest’s Battle for Social Justice
(Lawrencetown: Pottersfield Press, 1993). Erin Phillips, “The Impact of the
Second Vatican Council on the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society (1959-1968),”
CCHA Historical Studies 52 (1985):101.
75 Fay, A History of Canadian Catholics,
xv.