Missionary Canada Amnesia Receive the last hour alerts of duty<

First of all, these are the names that put me in the ear.The spokesperson for the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc nation, where the remains of the 215 children of the Kamloops boarding school, in British Columbia, are called in particular Baptiste, Jules, Casimir, Michel, Gosselin, Antoine,Lampreau.Why ?

So I plunged back into French missionary Canada of Lionel Groulx, published for the first time in 1962."In short, I would like to tell the great adventure of a small people who, barely born, throws themselves into the religious conquest of the Indian in North America," he begins.The sentence describes the test project well, which lists the long list of French Canadian Catholic missions over the centuries, from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic and the United States, then those of Africa,of Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean.Everything goes there, meticulously.It is, for Canon Groulx, to demonstrate that the imperialist spirit is always part of the soul of people here, despite the conquest: "His empire of formerly, he seems [...] that he wants itReconstitute on a higher plane, the spiritual plan this time, with indefinitely extensible borders ”.

The test begins in the time of New France, where it boasts "the conquering audacity" of the first missionaries, which persisted under the English regime. Il déplore qu’au XIX^e siècle, « les épreuves ou misères n’ont que très peu changé depuis le temps de la Nouvelle-France.The savage is still wild, or little of it: man-child, light, whimsical, incapable of sustained efforts, badly rid of his old paganism ".He adds: "As in ancient times alcohol fascinates him;Concubinage is rampant ".

Racist descriptions are not accessory to the book, but an important part of the argument.It is that there would not be as much nobility in the missionary if the natives had not been portrayed as sub-humans awaiting redemption.For example, the canon describes the dene (northwest territories) as "barbarians, almost Satanic", but wishes to reassure us.In contact with missionaries, "infanticides, cannibalism, often caused by misery, disappear".

In his story, Canon Groulx insists on the role of the Oblates of Marie-Immaculée, French order that the bishop of Montreal Ignace Bourget invites, in 1841, to settle near him to actively recruit within the low population-Canada.The Oblates "engage in Indian missions with real evangelical enthusiasm", assures us Groulx.Thus missions are launched all over Quebec and Canada well before the official opening of Aboriginal boarding schools.When these are set up, we volunteer to make them work.Thus, at least 57 of the 139 residents financed by the Government of Canada were managed by the Oblates during their years of operation.Rich in their experience in the West, they also put pressure on French -speaking deputies from the Mackenzie King government in the 1930s, so that boarding schools were also open in Quebec.

This is how nuns of the St. Lawrence Valley leave numerous "on the adventure", especially in the west.The brothers use the sisters of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin to take care of the Taycannat of Onion Lake, in Saskatchewan.The missionary sisters of Christ King, after having managed concentration camps for Canadians of Japanese origin during the Second World War, are assigned to "Indian schools".The sisters of Sainte-Croix and Sept-Douleurs open a boarding school in Moricitown, northeast of Prince Rupert.And the sisters of Sainte-Anne, from Saint-Jacques-de-l'Achigan, in Lanaudière, are notably responsible for "Indian schools of Kamloops, Kuper Island and Songhees", in British Columbia.

Finally, we are starting to understand the why of these names with French -speaking consonance of the members of the TK’emlúps te Secwepemc nation, where the 215 children of the Kamloops boarding school were found.

We are starting to understand that we may be wrong to present the macabre discovery of the remains of Kamloops children with a greater distance, here, because "West is far from us".We are starting to see that what happened in Quebec as in the meadows, the Far North or the West has happened with the participation of some of our grand-oncles, of our grand-tantes, whose link withThe church was the pride and pride of many families from here.We also see that collective amnesia on Aboriginal boarding schools is very strange, while some of our most famous and celebrated intellectuals have even boasted of the role of the French Canadian church in their establishment, in order to draw afeeling of national pride.

This church, and this vision of nationalism, many Quebecers have a painful memory of it, and dissociated from it at the very time of residential schools and Lionel Groulx, and of course then.But can dissociation justify the memory holes?The anachronism that separates Western Canada from the history of Francophones?The claim that these colonial administrators are not part of our family stories?The detachment of what happened here even in Quebec?

Let us remember that the commission which shed light on the boarding school is called truth and reconciliation.And this truth includes that the ideas of Canon Groulx echo a social and political vision that has influenced, for the best and for the worst, the relationships between indigenous peoples and French -speaking people from all over the country for several decades.Without truth, what reconciliation is possible?