12 FIFTY YEARS IN WESTERN CANADA

sufficient faith in him to dispose of him before the
normal time, and, contrary to custom, they sent him
out to foreign missions before he had been ordained.

It is true that the civil authorities, then made up
of atheists and so-called free-thinkers,. took great care
to accelerate such a premature ‘“‘obedience.’”’ It was
in the spring of 1880, when they trampled under foot
every principle of their pet Revolution slogan: Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity. They indeed granted liberty
and equal rights to every association, provided it was
of an anti-Christian complexion; but religious Con-
gregations they unmercifully dissolved, and confiscated
their property. That was their mark of fraternity.

The sending out of the young religious meant for
him the beginning of a new life, the unfolding of a
broader horizon. He was then directed not to Mon-
seigneur Grandin’s mission field, as he had expected,
but still farther, to distant British Columbia, with the
Indian missions of that country as his ultimate
goal.

After having bidden farewell to his family, the
levite set off from Le Havre for America on the
steamer Gascogne. He was accompanied by two
other Oblates, Brothers Nicolas Coccola and Dominic
Chiappini, Corsicans slightly older as age and Orders
went, but admitted later in the ranks of their common
Institute. They left France on June 26, 1880, and,
after a passage of thirteen days, landed at New York,
where an Oblate priest’® had come from Ottawa to
pilot them.

As long as their Mentor was with them, all went
well. They could wonder at ease at the strange ways
of America, such as the absence there of anything to

16 Father Prevost, who was, five years later, to become chaplain to
some of the troops which went to put down the Riel Rebellion.