16 FIFTY YEARS IN WESTERN CANADA

Brothers Coccola and Chiappini being already
deacons, were promoted to the priesthood on Passion
Sunday, 1881, at the same time that their younger
companion was made a subdeacon by the late Bishop
D’Herbomez, first Vicar Apostolic of British Columbia.

Saint Mary’s Mission, as it was then called, was the
most peaceful and least pretentious of places, a quiet
oasis of very restricted size on the skirt of the primeval
forest, with only two incipient farms, those of a Mr.
Perkins and a Mr. Wells, as satellites, to which might
be added the little clearing of a French half-breed,
Gabriel Lacroix, who was in later years to settle on
the Bulkley River, within Father Morice’s missionary
district.

The establishment consisted of a fairly large church
with a white-washed interior, the unusual size of which
was required by occasional Indian gatherings, or series
of predications. ‘This stood on the lower reach, where
the railway line now passes, and had for immediate
companions, right and left, a rather primitive house of
rough, unplaned boards for the priests and a slightly
better finished convent for the sisters, who conducted
a school for Indian girls, while the fathers had, directly
under Brother Henry, an Industrial School for boys.
Just east of the building belonging to that institution,
was a tiny creek, at the mouth of which stood a grist-
mill the property of the Mission, but operated by a
Mr. Threataway.

After the departure of Fathers Coccola and
Chiappini, Brother Morice was left there to continue
his studies alone, under the Rev. Alphonse Carion,
O.M.I., a worthy Belgian priest in charge of the
establishment, who, unfortunately, had more time to
consecrate to the farm across the Fraser than to
theology. The ever active mind of Brother Morice