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Abstract
This article analyses the educational work of two teaching Congregations – Les Missionnaires Oblates du Sacré-Coeur et de Marie Immaculée (The Missionary Oblate Sisters of the Sacred Heart and Mary Immaculate/ MO) and the Religieuses de Notre Dame de Missions (Sisters of Our Lady of Missions/ RNDM) – on the Canadian prairies between 1898 and 1930. It explores the two Congregations’ understandings of mission and education and their spirituality in terms of the Sisters’ ways of relating to God and in light of their work, having in mind the theological parameters and values set by the authority of the Catholic church, as well as the intersections of the Sisters’ ministry with the cultural and political life in the communities. Particular attention is given to the Franco-Manitoban communities where education, language and faith intertwined. The article considers that the Sisters lived within a linguistic mental space with boundaries which were part of their existential reality, and operated within a semantic field that helped them make sense of and bridge their sometimes disparate worlds.
Notes
1See Rosa Bruno-Jofré, The Missionary Oblate Sisters, Vision and Mission (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005); Marie Bénédicte Ollivier, RNDM, Missionary Beyond Boundaries: Euphrasie Barbier, 1829–1893, trans. Beverley Grounds, RNDM (Rome: Istituto Salesiano Pio XI, 2007); Susan Smith, RNDM, Call to Mission: The Story of the Mission Sisters of Aotearoa New Zealand and Samoa (New Zealand: David Ling Publishing Limited, 2010).
2The Question refers to the school crisis between 1890 and 1896 when provincial legislation abolished confessional state-supported schools following the Laurier-Greenway Compromise. Subsequently the Public School Act was modified in 1897, setting the basis for the common school. The Catholic church could no longer have its own school districts under its jurisdiction supported by public funding. However, the Act read that for religious exercises, when 10 pupils in any school spoke French or any other language other than English as their native language, the teaching of such pupils could be done in French or any other language and English. The Manitoba School Question was a Catholic question but also a French one, since the new legislation moved the Franco-Manitoban minority to the margins of power by denying French-speaking Manitobans the constitutional rights and privileges they had enjoyed earlier as members of a founding nation. See Robert Perin, Rome in Canada: The Vatican and Canadian Affairs in the Late Victorian Age (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 127–57.
3Ollivier, Missionary Beyond Boundaries. This is a non-hagiographical biography of the founder.
4Rebecca Rogers wrote that from the beginning of the nineteenth century, nuns and laywomen who were eager to fashion Christian women in the post-revolutionary period also left France to set up girls’ schools in Africa and the United States as part of a civilising mission “that had a distinctively French pedagogical twist.” Rebecca Rogers, From the Salon to the School Room, Educating Bourgeois Girls in Nineteenth-Century France (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 227.
5Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875–1914 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), chapter 3, 56–83.
6The Sisters left the Mother House in Lyon and the other houses in September 1901, as a consequence of the Associations Bill of 1901 that subjected religious associations to regulations and ensured the supremacy of civil power. For details of the departure from France and the various places where the Sisters went, see The Life of Mother Marie du Saint-Rosaire, Second Superior General of the Institute Notre Dame des Missions (Hinckley, UK: Samuel Walter, Station Road, 1935).
7The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) is a missionary congregation founded in 1826 by Eugene de Mazenod, a French priest born in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France on August 1 1782.The Oblate Fathers had a commitment to evangelise the poor and the unfaithful.
8Dorothy Ross, “Introduction: Modernism Reconsidered,” in Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences 1870–1930, ed. Dorothy Ross (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 1–25.
9Jürgen Mettepenningen, Nouvelle Théologie-New Theology: Inheritor of Modernism. Precursor of Vatican II (New York: T&T Clark International, 2010), 20–5.
10. See Gilbert Comeault, “The Politics of the Manitoba School Question and Its Impact on L.-P.-A. Langevin’s Relations with Manitoba’s Catholic Minority Groups, 1895–1915” (Master’s thesis, University of Manitoba, 1977).
11. See for example, J.Ad. Sabourin, DD, La religion et la morale dans nos écoles. Brochure (St. Boniface, Manitoba: Arthur, Archbishop de Saint-Boniface, 1925).
12. Tom Mitchell, “In the Image of Ontario: Public Schools in Brandon 1881–1890,” Manitoba History 12 (Autumn 1986), 2, www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/12/brandonpublicschools.shtml; Tom Mitchell, “Forging a New Protestant Ontario on the Agricultural Frontier: Public Schools and the Origins of the Manitoba School Question, 1881–1890,” Prairie Forum II, no. 1 (1986): 33–51.
13. Ian McKay, “The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History,” The Canadian Historical Review 81, no. 4 (December 2000): 617–45. For the debate around this approach see Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme (eds.), Liberalism and Hegemony, Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).
14See Gilbert Comeault, “The Politics of the Manitoba School Question and Its Impact on L.-P.-A. Langevin’s Relations with Manitoba’s Catholic Minority Groups, 1895–1915” (Master’s thesis, University of Manitoba, 1977).
15Jean-Marie Taillefer, “Les Franco-Manitobains et l’Éducation 1870-1970: Une Étude Quantitative” (PhD thesis, University of Manitoba, 1987), 254.
16Archbishop Langevin visited the schools and communities. We read in the journal of the convent in Ste-Rose-du-Lac, Manitoba that Langevin visited the Sisters and told them that the School Question was very important to him and that he was fighting against the invaders (envahisseurs) for the rights of French-Canadian people. He then visited the school, a public bilingual one, and blessed the children. Journal of Our Lady of Fourvière, Ste-Rose-du-Lac, Manitoba, Visite de Mgr l’Archevêque, January 16 1916, Box 60, File 5, Le Centre du Patrimoine, Société Historique de Saint-Boniface, St. Boniface, Manitoba (hereafter CPSHSB).
17Maureen McBride, RNDM, “‘Our Students Must Become Valiant Women!’ Approaches to Education of Euphrasie Barbier 1829–1893, Foundress of Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions” (paper presented at the RNDM Education Symposium, St. Mary’s College, Shillong, North East India, January 26 2006.
18See The Life of Mother Marie.
19Susan Smith, RNDM, Call to Mission. The Story of the Mission Sisters of Aotearoa New Zealand and Samoa (Auckland: David Ling Publishing Limited, 2010), 22.
20“Development of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions,” manuscript provided by Veronica Dunne, Provincial Superior of the Canadian Province, August 2011.
21Sister Mary of the Holy Trinity, “Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions in Canada, 1898–1923,” Silver Jubilee of the Religious of Notre Dame des Missions in Canada (1898-1923), 3. Manuscript provided by Sister Veronica Dunne, Provincial Superior.
22Ibid.
23Ida Lafricain was working with Délia Trétreault who had established, with approval from Monseigneur Bruchési, the École Apostolique in Montreal to train young women for missionary work in Africa and China. Together with Joséphine Montmarquet, Delia (Foundress) and Ida conformed the initial nucleus of what would be later on the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. Bruno-Jofré, The Missionary Oblate Sisters, 10–12.
24Rosa Bruno-Jofré, The Missionary Oblate Sisters, Vision and Mission (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 27.
25This concept is taken from Margaret Susan Thompson, “Charism or Deep Story? Towards Understanding Better the 19th Century Origins of American Women’s Congregations,” Review for Religious (May–June 1999): 230–50.
26Bruno-Jofré, The Missionary Oblate Sisters, 15.
27Smith, Call to Mission, 274.
28Ibid.
29Claire Himbeault, Superior-General, “Centenary Reflection on the Charism of Euphrasie Barbier,” manuscript, January 1994. Text of video. Box 3, File 5, p. 2, CPSHSB.
30Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, Euphrasie Barbier, My Life… Mission (France: Editions Sadifa, 1984).
31Himbeault, “Centenary Reflection.”
32Ibid. For an analysis of the original spirituality of the Congregation and the Trinitarian roots, see Ollivier, Missionary Beyond Boundaries, chapter XIII.
33Himbeault,. “Centenary Reflection.”
34Smith, Call to Mission, 275.
35Procèss-Verbal of the General Chapter held August 21st, 1925 at Deal, England. Resolution 18. Manuscript. B01-08; 544, Box 14, File 15, CPSHSB.
36Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 3–53, especially 45 and 46. The notions of salvation and missions have been discussed from a postcolonial perspective. See Letty M. Russell, “Cultural Hermeneutics: A Postcolonial Look at Mission,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20, no. 1 (Spring 2004), ProQuest Religion: 23–40.
37Father Péalapra’s teachings to the Oblate Sisters are a good example. In his words, “the human body had [the] instincts of [a] wild beast.” His language was one of fear and temptation. See Bruno-Jofré, The Missionary Oblate Sisters, 66–7.
38Jansenism favoured the rights of the individual consciousness, advocated direct contact with the Bible and promoted a major role for women and the understanding of the Church as an assembly of the faithful. Françoise Hidesheimer, Le Jansénisme, L’histoire et l’heritage (Paris: Petite Encyclopédie Moderne du Christianisme, Desclée d Brouwer, 1992), 8–10. In the mid-seventeenth century, the papacy condemned propositions contained in a theological treatise by Flemish bishop Cornelius Jansen entitled “Augustinus” (1636), which needs to be understood in the context of debates over the relationship between God’s grace and humans’ free will. It was intended as a restatement of the fourth-century Catholic position on Grace advanced by Saint Augustine. Jansen insisted on the crippling impact of Original Sin on human will that needed to be motivated by grace.The movement that emerged, which also contained modernist elements, was seen as a threat to both Rome and Versailles. Alexander Sedgwick, “Jansen and the Jansenists,” History Today 40, no. 7 (1990): 36–42, in particular page 36.
39Veronica Dunne, “The Story of the RNDMs in Canada 1898-2010,” manuscript provided by the Congregation, 6.
40Mitchell, “In the Image of Ontario,” 12.
41 Journal St. Augustine Convent, Brandon, Manitoba, September 1, 1899, Box 54, File 22, Le Centre du Patrimoine, Société historique de Saint-Boniface.
42RNDM, House Journal, St. Augustine Convent, May 1900 (no day), October 1913 (no day), Box 54, file 22. Le Centre du Patrimoine.
43RNDM, St. Michael’s Academy, Brandon, Manitoba, June 1921, Box 54, file 22.
44Sister Mary of the Holy Trinity, “Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions in Canada,” 31.
45Ibid.
46Ibid., 34–35, quotation on page 35; “The Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions receive a warm welcome in Crooked Lake Mission, 14 December 1898,” brochure of the celebration of 95 years of arriving in Canada and the Sisters’ second foundation at Crooked Lake Mission, Box 54, file 10, CPSHSB.
47Sister Mary of the Holy Trinity, “Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions in Canada,” 30–6; Rev. Théophile Campeau, OMI to SA Grandeur Monseigneur Langevin, Archevêque de St-Boniface, Manitoba, December 1 1898, in which he narrates the welcoming reception the Aboriginal people gave to the Sisters.
48There were oral references in Canada to the Montessori schools that were established in New Zealand by the Congregation after Sister Mary St. Domitila travelled to England for the General Chapter of 1925 and stopped on her way to meet the Italian pedagogue María Montessori (1870–1952), herself a Catholic and the advocate of a child-centred methodology emphasising self-directed activities, used in pre-school and primary school settings. Smith, Call to Mission, 90.
49Laurence Lux-Sterritt and Carmen M. Mangion, “Introduction: Gender, Catholicism and Women’s Spirituality over the Longue Durée,” in Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality, ed. Laurence Lux-Sterritt and Carmen M. Mangion (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 180–6.
50The Rev. Mother Marie du Saint-Rosaire, 2nd Superior-General of the RNDM from 1893 to 1912, was described in her biography as having “care to fulfill all the wise regulations of the Rule as regards relations with the world,” showing clearly how well she practiced the angelic virtue. The Life of Mother Marie, 11.
51Bruno-Jofré, The Missionary Oblate Sisters, 37.
52Lux-Sterritt and Mangion, “Introduction,” 1–19.
53Rosa Bruno-Jofré, “Citizenship and Schooling in Manitoba, 1918-1945,” Manitoba History 36 (Autumn/Winter, 1998–1999): 26–35, 34–35.
54Sister Mary of the Holy Trinity, “Sisters of Our Lady of Missions in Canada,” 13.
55In 1910, the diocese of Regina, Saskatchewan was created, and in 1915 (after Langevin’s death) the diocese of Winnipeg.
56Adélard Langevin, Archevêque de Saint-Boniface, December 29 1906 to Revde Soeur Supérieure des Soeurs de la Croix de Murinais. Fonds Corporation archiépiscopale catholique romaine de Saint-Boniface (CACRSB), L26435–L26436. CPSHSB.
57Procès Verbal du Chapitre Général, Maison Généralice des Religieuses de Notre Dame des Missions, 1919. B01-08, 544/14/15, CPSHSB.
58Editorial, Stella Orientis, Sacred Heart College, 1942 yearbook, 6.
59McBride, “‘Our Students Must Become Valiant Women,’” 5, 6.
61Letter of Mère Marie du Coeur-de-Jésus to M.M. St. Michael, June 2 1878, cited in Coleen Mader, “Mother Mary of the Heart of Jesus, Her Thoughts and Ideas on Education,” manuscript, Box 3, File 4. CPSHSB.
60Ibid.
62Letter of Mère Marie du Coeur-de-Jésus to MM St. Michael, Nelson, June 2 1878, cited in McBride, “‘Our Students Must Become Valiant Women,’” 8.
63Ibid, 9.
64Ibid, 10.
65Bruno-Jofré, The Missionary Oblate Sisters, 27.
66Ibid.
67“Premières constitutions des Missionnaires Oblates du Sacré-Coeur et de Marie Immaculée” (1906), copy of the manuscript, St. Boniface, Manitoba, July 3 1968, ch. 5:15 Archives of the Missionary Oblates.
68“Notre vocation d’éducatrice,” a summary of talks to the Sisters at St. Charles by Rev. D.M. Beauregard, parish priest from 1921–1928. Chroniques des Missionnaires Oblates 4, no. 3 (December 1921): 41.
69“Notre vocation d’éducatrice,” Chroniques des Missionnaires Oblates 4, no. 7 (December 1922): 109.
70Evelyn Woodward, Poets, Prophets and Pragmatists: A New Challenge for Religious Life (Notre Dame, IN: Ave María Press, 1985), 24.
71“Compositions et journal des élèves,” Couvent de St-Charles, April 16 1911. Archives of the Missionary Oblate Sisters. The students’ journal covered from September 1911 to 1913, inclusive. The style and content of the journal varied with the different writers.
72Ibid.
73Sister Louis de France, interviewed by Rosa Bruno-Jofré and Dora Tétreault, motherhouse, St. Boniface, Manitoba, July 3 1990, Archives of the Missionary Oblate Sisters.
74Sister Mary of the Holy Trinity, “Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions in Canada,” 79.
75Congregation of Our Lady of the Missions, Directives, Patronal Feasts (Rome: Tipografia Filippi, no other information), 5.
76Taillefer, “Les Franco-Manitobains et l’Éducation,’’ 262–3.
77Marcel Martel, Le deuil d’un pays imaginé: Rêves, luttes et déroute du Canada français: Les rapports entre le Québec et la francophonie canadienne (1867-1975) (Ottawa, ON: Les presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1997), 20. http//site.ebrary.com/lib/queen/Doc?id=10134977&ppg=23. Thus, the Association Canadienne-Francaise d’éducation de l’Ontario was formed in 1910, two years ahead of the provincial decision to limit the teaching of French to the first two years of elementary school. L’Association Catholique Franco-Canadienne de la Saskatchewan was founded in 1910 and l’Association Canadienne-Francaise de l’Alberta in 1926. The role of the Catholic church is not a negligible one. The first national congress in French took place in 1912. The associations for Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan were active in developing French and religious educational programmes, administering French exams and inspecting the schools. Parish circles, local parents, the Trustees’ associations of these schools, the associations of teachers of French and very particularly, the Catholic church were involved with the Association. In 1916, 56.5% of a total of 258 teachers in these schools for Francophones were religious, with approximately 8000 students in 133 schools. The numbers were lower in 1926, but are reliable since they were taken from the list of the Association. The decline is explained by the fact that a number of bilingual schools counted in 1916 had a heterogeneous clientele. Taillefer, “Les Franco-Manitobains et l’Education,” 270–1.
78The programme included the teaching of Canadian history in French and the history of the Church apart from Catechism, and the entire teaching had to be permeated by Catholic values. The Bulletin des Institutrices (1924) published by the Ligue des Institutrices Catholiques de l’Ouest, as well as periodicals such as La Liberté, directed by the Oblate Fathers and founded in 1913, were part of the network. The teachers’ conventions such as the Convention des Instituteurs et Institutrices du Manitoba, which the Sisters attended, provided curriculum information and pedagogical notes. The Sisters registered in their house journals when they attended the conventions: see for example, RNDM, Livre historique concernant le Monastère de Sainte Madeleine a Saint-Eustache, Manitoba, entries for October 21 1916 and May 6 1927. The Sisters in both Congregations also registered participation of the students in the Concours de langue française and the rate of success. This also took place in Saskatchewan. Thus, for example, in the journal of St-Raphael Convent in Wolseley, Saskatchewan, the Sisters registered on October 16 1926 that 11 students had obtained their certificates and one would receive the provincial Gold Medal for Grade 4. Journal of St-Raphael Convent, Wolseley, Box 64, File 12, CPSHSB.
79Taillefer, “Les Franco-Manitobains et l’Éducation,” 262–4.
80Rosa Bruno-Jofré and Colleen Ross, “Decoding the Subjective Image of Women Teachers in Rural Towns and Surrounding Areas in Southern Manitoba, 1947–1960,” in Issues in the History of Education in Manitoba: From the Construction of the Common School to the Politics of Voices, ed. Rosa Bruno-Jofré (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1993), 586; 569–593. “The inspective function is key in the political relation between the central authority and rural districts. As Hon. W. C. Miller put it, the inspector represented the Department of Education in relations with the schools, boards. In Miller’s words, ‘You may have heard within his own division, the Inspector is the Department. To a large extent this is true.’” Hon. W.C. Miller, “The Minister Page: The Role of the Inspector of Schools,” Manitoba School Journal, XIX, no. 2 (October 1957): 3, cited in Bruno-Jofré and Ross, “Decoding,” 580. There were Protestant children who had to attend public schools run by nuns. Sometimes parents complained that the schools taught French during class hours, which was illegal, and an inspector was sent to the school. Constance Franzman attended Fannystelle public school, run by the Oblate Sisters, between January and June 1915, where she took grade X before going to St. Charles (a private school run by the Sisters). She was one of six or seven Protestant boarders who shared the convent routine in the morning: “There was a chapel in the convent and a priest used to come every morning (on weekdays) to say mass. All boarders were required to attend, Protestants included. Most of the service was in Latin so it seemed very strange to me as I didn’t understand the ritual. Sometimes for a special mass we would all be marched to the church – a fine edifice which is still in use today.” Constance Franzmann, manuscript, memoirs written upon request by Rosa Bruno-Jofré. Cited in Bruno-Jofré, The Missionary Oblate Sisters, 127.
81Other minority groups such as Jews, Ukrainians, and Mennonites lived through complex processes of resistance, contestation, negotiation, spiritual search and indoctrination in the public arena called school.