Show THE SALT LAKE T1I1I3UXE SCXlUV g" iil ——— ff Hr 111 XI - t QK VI NTs Hill UlllllBMI APBIL 27 3® 4aUuU4J U M44‘UillAidwfcJ4f4lL kiaiBNl 4i Heroines Nun j3roy of the Far-North 0 iffesssss (g ©t T H-- gray-dresse- ing in pairs IN ' ’ll £ ( she had from Alwhere there is five years in the m M bany only a Hudson Bay Company post where live a few Indians a few occasional traders and trappers and t y-- i both Anthe missionaries glican and Roman Catholic ”r—' ‘ST- - sri-- y l: Five sisters comprised the Sister staff at the school Valerien is now in Ottawa on leave as it were the Before it was built flee sisters had to live a The mission at Fort Resolution third time since she first and the specwhole season cooped up with 25 natives in a cabin 20 by 30 feet went into the north country tre off hunger stalked the post in the hard Hunters This spring they had completed their new mission house where the nuns would be able to live somewhat more comfortably 1QDAY at Albany there are cows on a barge a few summers ago But before they priests and the Indians had helped build it They were neither the nuns nor the priests n6r the Indians about ready to move in when they awoke one night to the sound of dogs barking Now they Men came running by T here tasted milk from one year’s end to the other have milk sometimes butter instead of the occasional was much shouting and rousing of sleepers before canned milk that was all they could Up on the little hill where they had built their new house flames leaped skyward Sometimes they have vegetables potatoes turnips and Their new home burned down to the ground the work of three hard years carrots But only sometimes Many is the time the good As if this was not enough the ice of the bay piled farsister told me that the produce of the little vegetable garther up on shore than ever before den was entirely ruined by early frost or rain There is There had been a not much soil in that bleak and barren country suitable to heavy winter Day by day the noise of cracking ice was brought closer to the mission house and convent near the farming shore till it seemed as if it would not stop for the build“The life it is terrible" the Mother Superior explained It did not stop It crashed right through one end “But when one works for God — " And that is the thought ings of the dwelling place which now would have to serve the lhat spurs these people on Loneliness sickness cold hunnuns for several more yean until a new one could be built ger fish and forever more fish dirty natives all these facI hen came the thaw and the whole of the ground floor tors pass away when they think of the consecration of their The water spread on the g lives was under water shore washed through church houses and convent That mission at Albany is the only one in the north country to which the sisters of Ottawa send nuns They have Been sending them there for 28 years when the first scenes like these Sister Valerien has escaped for IJtROM of peace and rest among her sisters ones went in to help the priests and lay brothers to teach farther the Indian children and care for the sick south She made the long trip by boat and train They have a school and hospital there' to which come all the children much of it over the only water highway which leads by of the region in summertime with their parents fake and river to the transcontinental railway main line Sister Valerien car) recall other trips down those waterThere they stay in the summer When the first snow falls the Indian population melts away They are on the ways to Albany in years gone by when the waters were chase for by the trapping of animals and the gathering of not as smooth as they were this year when the canoe in furs jhey live But if possible the sisters keep the children which she wpuld be travelling with another sister perhaps at the boarding school teach them English and French a priest and several Indians would charge down heavily-swolle- n calchism reading and writing in Cree and all the other streams the big frail craft at times near to overschool in the civilized If the sister was fortunate she might ride home things they would be learning in turning communities that seem so far a(way to her northern ’destination in a barge fitted with a sail or Next srat these nuns may go still farther afield the poled up the rivers and along the shores of the lake a long Mother Superior informed me fort George is a tedious trip in cold and rain the sort of trip which harmission where priests have lieen tiying to evangelie dened pioneers try to avoid and which is certainly not the Indians for some years The mission is 400 miles in- pleasant for a woman coming out from a convent Aeet Tliete land from James Bay and the pot at Albany came only Indians of the backwoods practically primitive as yet They come with their furs lo trade at the Btoie In the 15 years that there has been a mission at this post the priests have only been able to convert right natives And it is The rest remain true to their ancestral faith among thee Indians that tire sisters will go next yedr to lesume their tasks Sister Valerien will go back next summer so will another sister who is now on leave in Ottawa Sister Geodeon These women come back to civilization for but a single year From the Montreal mother house 'go forth the sisters who live in the Mackenzie River basin that great waterway of the northwest which empties into the Arctic Ocean There are four convents in that region One of these at Providence more than 2000 miles northwest of Chicago There is celebrated its diamond jubilee two years ago another at Aklavrk on the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the Mackenzie the farthest north mission of white in the world Here is where the Here is the real Arctic hinterland Primitive Eskimos spend struggle to live is at its hardest their days hunting for food in this tegion and the white people who come to live among them as well as the Indians a little to their south have to do likewise e ‘ gt low-lyin- “ was in September of 1866 that tha of the Gray Nuns left Montreal for Fort Providence in the Mackenzie country It was on August 28 867 that they arrived there From Montreal they went by train to St Paul in Minnesota where ox carU had to lie used to go into Canada for railways did not yet exist that far west into or through the Dominion They reached St Boniface before winter and stayed there till the worst of the cold weather was past They set out once more early in June this time accompanied by two members of the order of Oblates of Maria Immaculate who inhabit the northern missions as priests Their route lay entirely through d country uninhabited and devoid of all civilized touches except a few trading posts and missions What these devoted women had to unde'rgo can best be learned from their letters in French to the Mother Here their whole story is told Superior at Montreal T hey left St Boniface in ox carts their baggage in the wagons Most of the tune they walked alongside to lessen the burden for the beasts Mud is a light name for what they encountered on the road which they had to carve through the tall grass There had been heavy rains Everything was soaking wet and their long robes were wet through ana through before they had gone many miles The rain did not let up and these delicate women were forced to go ahead continually wet to the skin And if there was a day when the rain did not come down in torrents the sun was so strong that it caused them untold pain If they made six They had to rest often miles a day it was considered good Then they left their ox carts behind took to canoes and were brought to Lake Athabasca Here thfy rested for a few days T hen on again up the Slave River to Great Slave Lake on whose farther shore lay their destination Many were the portages that had to be made down this stream Many is the time that the women had lo carry luggage on their shoulders while the Indians and priests took the canoes and the heavy bundles ovrrjrocky portages around broiling rapids Sister Valerian at the frozen noithland left nnth Sister Ceodeon and three of their pupils at Ollowa They sani three years of hard rvoik go up in smoke and flame when their new mission burned at Albany James Bay Back from summer £ i inland near which the boat was stuck fast Driftwood was collected and a fire built This fish was the only food and it had to be eaten without seasoning of any kind For four long nights and days they In the camped on that barren island daytime they would make attempts to get tlie boat out They would hack away the ice from the sides and in this way make some progress But it was in vain The men set out to find open water 1 hey crossed the island crossed ice to other islands but so suddenly had winter descended that there was no open water Then they spent anywhere within sight a fifth night on the island In the morning the parly set out to walk home to the mission leaving behind their boat to be crushed in file spring ica jam and their big catch the largest they ad made all that was needed to allow for plenty of fish till springtime Everything that meant sustenance they had lo leave in this boatload of fish' For 40 miles these sisters walked over the barrens crossing streams and lakes It was arduous for them But To they had with them some children take care of these was the party's primary aim And in the end after walking for several days in the cold the mission hove in sight a welcome sight even though their failure to bring in the fish meant that (here would have to be plenty of fishing through the ice that winter By JAMES MONTAGUES AS A JA Liff'p ' " A£ ft Bob Por -An infrequent sili Canadian government explorer entertains native chit -dien and Cray Nuns in the mission at AlflaOik on the short v of the Arctic Ocean children penetrate to the most remote outposts of civilization and Montreal you will often see d nuns walkEven in Toronto St Hyacinthe Edmonton Vancouver Oakland Nome Buffalo and many other United States and Canadian Percities you will see these nuns whose mother house is in Montreal haps among these women are some who have come from distant places from the northern parts of Canada The Gray Nuns are everywhere in the north wherever their help in tending the sick and teaching the children may be of use ’ The order traces' back to 1737 when' Madame d’Youville stalled it in It has since grown into five distinct and separate congregations Montreal with mother houses at Ottawa Montreal St Hyacinthe Nicolet and Quebec The I met some of these good women and one in particular in Ottawa Mother Superior of the Ottawa branch had sent me to see her She was at the orphanage where she was teaching white children a change from teaching Sister Valerien was not the little Indian youngsters in Northern Ontario type you would associate with adventures of the kind she related in broken English and fluent French She looked little inured to itself hardships gentility But the story she told me of 12 years at the mission at Albany on James Bay 600 miles north of Ottawa by no means tallied with her appearance 'A) break in the Arctic Winter Amazing tales of women’s bravery crowd the historic records of a sisterhood whose good works in tending the sick and helping OTTAWA S w (C'orrrisht 1311 Bjr it happened that a parly from one of the missions Three priests five out on a fishing expedition nuns and some of the older childien had gone out to In the northland there is no gather in a hdrvcst of fish distinction between man and woman in the struggle for food and everyone must help Thus the party bad set forth in a big barge to catch as many fi'h as they could in one day They sailed away from the mission struck across the lake nearby to the fishing grounds and began to reel them in They catch big fellows in that country trout white-fis- h sturgeon and others weighing anywhere from eight to 28 pounds They have to take thousands of these fish for the winter supply Fishing was good and now the party turned about to But they did not go far When they go home again began to near shore they saw that while they were out the thermometer had dropped low enough to freeze the shore waters They wedged in among this thin ice tried to make a passage which would lead them home but could In the short period that they had been away not advance the ice had become so thick that the barge stuck frozen in near shore Now It was dark they were far from home and had no suitable clothing to stay out in the cold They built a windbreak and shelter with the sail from the boat on an lveryWcrk Jtagazinc— I'r lo'eil In C 3 A ) SO ' IT first 1 rarely-travele- g UT even today there are many difficulties in the way so long ago five sisters had to live for a season cooped up with 25 natives the whole party 1 hat living in one log cabin barely 20 by 30 feet in size Tne next spring a new house was was at Fort Resolution built for the nuns They looked forward to inhabiting it T hey wrote home about the comforts that it would have made by their own hands And then they moved in Soon the winter supply of fish began to diminish And where there had been joy and happiness a few months earlier there now appeared the dread spectre of hunger The flotir which had been brought in at great exense In fact "even the to make bread dwindled to nothing But above all this llieie mice felt the dreaded hunger" Somehow they passed the winter all remained a smile surviving and not a child left in their caie was sick One year not jkJ |