THE BISHOP OF THE ARCTIC.
The trail hath no languorous longing;
It leads to no Lotus land;
On its way dead Hopes come thronging
To take you by the hand;
He who treads the trail undaunted, thereafter shall command.
--KATE SIMPSON HAYES.
Half a century ago Bishop Tache wrote a letter to France, in which he
asked for some missionaries. In response to this appeal a certain
young Grouard was sent to Fort Garry. When Bishop Tache looked over
the slender stripling he said: "I asked for a man; they sent me a boy."
But a year later he wrote again: "Please send me more boys." This was
fifty years ago, and from that day to this the northern world has had
but one opinion of Grouard--he makes good. He is a worker who sticks
to his text. To-day, he is the head of the Catholic missions in the
far north, and his diocese, until lately, included the very Yukon.
He is seventy-seven years old (but we don't believe it), with a leonine
head, an unrazored face and a chest like a draught horse; an erect man
who commands the instant attention of whatever company he enters.
Assuredly, he is the type of the sound mind in the sound body. It is
not to be wondered that his attractive personality made him the
cynosure of all eyes, and that his name was on every tongue when,
several years ago, he went to England, there to attend a great
conference of his Church.
Bishop Grouard is alert in manner and has a kindly consideration for
the poorest person. Attend you, sirs and madams, to observe the Old
World courtesy in its highest perfection, you must see it in the person
of a French gentleman who holds a position of honor in the far, far
north, it is an absolutely truthful courtesy, that has its roots in a
big warm heart, so that it becomes the very bone and fibre of the man.
By way of placating our more southerly dignitaries in what may seem an
invidious comparison, it may be urged that Bishop Grouard's urbanity
has never suffered such cross-currents as the municipal watering cart,
speed-limit fines, or the bill collectors, for, as yet, these
well-conceived but ill-approved institutions are entirely unknown in
the strangely blissful regions north of 55 deg.
It is for the fiftieth anniversary of Bishop Grouard's consecration as
a priest that all of us have gathered from Edmonton to Hudson's Hope to
celebrate. We are assembled at Grouard on Lesser Slave Lake, the
missionary post that was built here forty-nine years ago and named
after the hero of this day. Our assembly is what smart society
reporters would describe as "mixed," and the word would be correctly
used; nevertheless, the interest and colour of this occasion are in no
inconsiderable measure due to this very fact. Besides, ours is a
goodly fellowship.
Here we have Father Orcolan from Rome, who has written books on
astronomy; Jake Gaudette, who was born in the Arctic Circle; Indian
Chiefs from near and far, with their wives and children; big Jim
Cornwall, the Cecil Rhodes of the north; Bishop Joussard, the
coadjutor, a short man with a hard-bitten sun-scorched face; factors
and traders from outlying posts (believe me, right merry gentlemen);
Judge Noel and his legal company, who have been dispensing justice in
the regions beyond; lean-hipped, muscular trappers who toe-in from
walking on the trails; equally lean-hipped river men who toe-out from
keeping their balance on a log; children from the mission schools;
black-robed nuns, doctors, government officials, and stalwart ranchers
in homespun and leather--even bankers. This short gentleman, who looks
as if he had just heard a good idea, is George Fraser, wit and
journalist. The tall man in khaki with the positive shoulders is Fred
Lawrence, pioneer and trader, likewise Fellow of the Royal Geographical
Society; these and other interesting folk, the pictures of whom even my
newly cut quill stops short at delineating. In truth, they are all
here--the world and his wife--excepting only white girls. "It would
seem too much like a special miracle," explains an Irish rancher, "to
find half a dozen colleens set down here in Grouard--something like
finding posies in the snow of December."
And the good Bishop Grouard is overcome because he doesn't deserve the
homage of these people. "Truly, madame, I did not think to receive all
this honour. I am only an old voyageur, a poor old fellow who gets
near the end of the river."
"Does the paddle grow heavy, monseigneur?" I ask, "or is it that the
journey is long?"
"Non, non, madame; it is the thought of home at the end, and the loved
ones."
"But surely, monseigneur, the end is yet a long way off. Your eyes are
not dimmed, neither is your natural force abated. And did we not this
very day hear you speak to the tribes in six tongues?"
"Six was it?" queries the bishop. "Six! Ah, well! they seem to come
to me easily. I feel like the man who had only to open his mouth to
have roast ducklings fly therein."
Now this old northman has a close grip on twelve languages--it was
Father Fahler who gave me the list--so that his modesty is truly
disconcerting in an age wherein vanity seems to vary inversely with
talent. He is a master in the use of Greek, Latin, French, English,
Cree, Eskimo, Rabbitskin, Chippewaian, Beaver, Slavis, Dog Rib, and
Loucheux.
Bishop Grouard is an exegete and printer of no mean order, having
translated the service book of the Catholic Church into seven languages
and printed them himself. I do not know if the printing press he
brought into these northern fastnesses was the very first, but if not,
it was assuredly the second, for there is only one other.
What these books have meant to the tribes it is not for mere
terrestrial folk to say, but if the Catholic doctrine of supererogatory
works be a reasonable and true one, of a surety it is a splendid
balance that is laid up to the good bishop's account. In the more
southerly provinces, where people like books, it is an easy matter for
messieurs the publishers to roll out scores of editions to the greedy
public, but up here in the north publishing a book becomes both a joke
and a tragedy. In the first place, people do not care for books; in
the second, the people do not know the alphabet.
This was how Bishop Grouard came to build schools for the children. He
had to teach the Indians to read. If you care to you may go to the
school across the bishop's driveway and see the children. There are
hundreds of them, or even more, but if you wait awhile we will go
together, for they are giving a play to-night, and at this moment are
rehearsing their parts. It was Sister Egbert and Sister Ignatius who
wrote the play; the theme, I have heard, is an incident in the life of
the bishop.
But it takes a long time to learn reading; besides, there are many
distractions. And then the older folk whose eyes are smoke-dimmed by
the tepee fires may never hope to con the letters. It were ill
reasoning to suppose so. For these people who are less literate the
kind bishop painted pictures of angels on the walls and on the ceiling
of the church, and he made one of the Crucifixion, over the altar, a
glowing canvas instinct with living reality. The onlooker may truly
say of this what Ruskin said of Raphael's "Transfiguration": "It goes
directly to the heart. It seems almost to call you by name."
If you have lived long in the north you will have been wondering this
while back how our workaday ecclesiastic got his materials into
Grouard. How came his printing press, his type, his canvass, and his
paints? Where did this man get the furniture for his schools, his
hospitals, his church? Where did he get the boards for all these
buildings?
The boards, curious person, were cut at his own saw-mill, from which
boards he fashioned the furniture with his hands. "But how," you
persist, "did he bring the machinery for his sawmill?"
That was easy; he brought it here in a steamboat. Any one could tell
you that.
"But where did he get the steamboat?"
Oh! he built the boat himself--the first steamboat on the Lesser Slave
Lake. In it, if he cared, he could carry his printing press and his
canvases also.
It will not be surprising if the historians of the future appraise
Bishop Grouard's combination of wisdom and action as something keenly
akin to genius. Indeed, they are almost sure to.
I cannot tell you what the anniversary services meant--it cannot be
expected of any one who is versed in the Thirty-nine Articles of the
English Church instead of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin--but I came
away from them with languorous impressions of golden robes, silver
censers, and wavering lights, the odour of lilies and lilacs that
wilted in the heat; a suspended cross with an agonized Christ, wan and
attenuated; of purple and scarlet cloths, of dark-haired young priests,
husky and brown-skinned. There were other things like a shepherd's
crook, and smoke of incense, but, most of all, there was a music that
mothered you and stayed with you. In some way or other these old
plaintive songs of Egypt seem fitted to the boreal regions, but why I
cannot explain.
In the city we must perforce set a stage for a drama, but here Nature
has made a setting for us high on a hill overlooking a wide meadow that
slopes to the bay. You have read something like this in classic myths,
or maybe it was in Shakespeare, but it doesn't greatly matter; the play
is the thing. For myself, I made believe that is the slope of
Parnassus--for the Pythian hero was also a promoter of colonization, a
founder of cities, a healer of the sick, an institutor of games, a
patron of arts.
It is on this outdoor stage in its June-tide glory that we banquet;
that we sing; that we play our parts. And it is here that Keenosew the
Fish, chief of the Crees, with rapid rush of speech and voice of
military sharpness, presents the homage of his tribe. In like manner
do also the other representatives of other northerly tribes. Each
chief wears a Treaty medal as a pledge from her Gracious Majesty, Queen
Victoria.
It is here also that a fair-faced woman of our company expresses the
reverence of her sisters of the diocese for Monseigneur the Bishop,
and, as a token of the same, presents to him a plate heaped high with
coins of gold.
And from this hill it is that we ride through the newly cut road, a
thousand men and women of us in stately procession, but withal gaily
caparisoned. Observe, if you will, our ribbons and fringes of gold;
the little flags in our bridles; our lynx-skin saddle clothes, and the
wreaths of purple vetch that hang from the pommels. Look well at our
black soutanes, scarlet coats, grey homespuns, and yellow moose hides,
for we are proud this day and wear our finest feathers. It is not well
to be disturbed by the untamable naughtiness of our horses, for the
northern trailer, you must have heard, has no stomach for glitter of
trappings, neither does he like the feel of neighbours. As we ramble
down a white aisle of birch and poplar, the feet of our horses tread
out for us the odour of leaf mould, which odour is the panacea of the
world.
We do not ride with any preconceived plans, or because of any
propaganda. Neither are we knights who sally forth to right wrongs,
albeit we have the truest knights of all with us--he who has snow on
his head but fire in his heart; he who has taught these tribes by
doing.....
This day we ride without review or forecast. We ride because we are
glad. All we ask of life is room to rove adown this long white pathway
in this young world. It is the best that life can give--room to ride.