“Father Pat” of the

hoo tenays

* Ey

NOEL ROBINSON *

Remarkable Irish Anglican Priest Whose Name Has Become a Legend in B.C.

—He Combined Muscular Christianity With a Keen Sense of Humour, Great

Gentleness and Self Sacrifice, and Met a Tragic End with Fortitude—Exciting Incidents in Which He Figured in the Rossland Gold Excitement.

“HE RODE EVERYWHERE through the mountains and for endless miles with his surplice packed on his saddle. He always appeared happy as a clam, except when serious matters demanded his attention. Everybody knew him among that rough and-ready crowd of miners, prospectors and settlers and they would talk with him just as the soldiers would with Padre Scott in the last war. He was a man’s man, if ever there was one, but he was equally popular with both sexes, and his good works were legion during the Rossland gold excitement when I knew him.”

In these words Colonel Jack Leckie, who was through the thick of that excitement, summed up “Father Pat, of the Kootenays,”

whose name, when I was knocking about in the Rock Creek-Greenwood-Midway country a few years after the turn of the century, had already become a legend there. That was only five years after he met his tragic end.

“Father Pat”—the patronymic by which he was always known to his contemporaries in B.C.—the name is probably unknown to this generation, though there are still sur viving a sprinkling of old-timers, like Col- onel Leckie, who have a vivid recollection of this dynamic Irishman who was a priest in the Anglican Church. He was a man of the muscular Christianity type and his ex- ploits on horseback, in sport—and with his fists when occasion demanded—were

as notable as were his innumerable acts kindness and his spiritual ministrations

It is well that his memory should be ke green, even at a time when heroic deeds war fill the pages of the press, for “pea hath her victories no less renowned th war.”

“He would have made a wonderful pad in the war,” added the Colonel, “thou; I fancy he would probably have been hit self in the fighting ranks. Canon Scott w peerless as a padre and they would ha had much in common, though Father P was more aggressive and snappier in repa tee—that’s where the Irish came in. Th were both salt of the earth and both we very tolerant. He would think nothing

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