8 FIFTY YEARS IN WESTERN CANADA

in the morning, although he was as yet scarcely
sixteen !

If the reader will bear in mind this little particular,
he will have the key to the future missionary-scientist’s
ways. Too often did he commit excesses of that kind,
and it is really wonderful that, in spite of such self-
abuse—no recesses, scarcely ever any relaxation from
work—he should have reached the threescore and ten
which he attained last year.

We may as well state at the outset and in line with
the foregoing that, though he was always a great
worker, he generally attended to the requirements of
what was essentially inherent to his vocation more
out of personal taste and natural attraction than
because of a sense of duty, a circumstance, he adds,
which detracts somewhat from his merit.

Be this as it may, when his classical studies were
over, he repaired to Nancy, where he started, August
14, 1877, the year of noviciate which was to entitle him
to enter the Order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate
(O.M.1.), to which belonged the late Mgr. Grandin,
his guide and adviser.

The Oblates, who have done so much for the whole
of Canada, east and west, form a missionary body,
founded in France in 1816, with a view to preaching to
and catechizing the lower classes of society, such as
the country people and converting and civilizing the
humblest. They work among the aborigines of North
America, the Cinghalese and Tamils of Ceylon, the
Zulus and Basutos of South Africa, and the like.

By his first vows,’* Brother Morice, as he was then
called, became for one year member of the Order, after
a period of apprenticeship which was hard on him, not
because of the routine exercises or the curbing of one’s

12 Taken at Nancy on the 15th of Aug., 1878.