A.L. K. Switzer, March 4, 1964
Father Joseph-Marie
Couture, s.j. Part Three
Life as a Paddling Priest
Father Couture’s apostolate for purposes of description may
be conveniently divided into three main stages, viz:
His trips by canoe – 1920- 1933
His trips by plane – 1933 – 1940
His subsequent ministry from 1940 until his death (March 4,
1949)
He secured his baptism as a travelling missionary of the
North in the summer of 1920 when he visited the Albany with Father Desautels.
On January 25, 1922, at the age of 36 he was ordained a
priest. Sept. 8, 1922, Father Couture with eight others
left for Florennes, Belgium for his Troisieme An ou ecole du Coeur – a year of
post-graduate studies required for a Jesuit. He returned to Quebec, May 24,
1923.
At this point his biographer states “he will work all his
life near the poor Ojibway of Northern Ontario, having no other desire than to
help them spiritually and materially.”
In the first thirteen years of his life as a missionary he
travelled each summer about 2000 miles by canoe and in the winter about 1500
miles on snowshoes and by dog team. The
hardships he endured on these trips can only be appreciated by those who have
spent months at a time paddling through the North, living out of a packsack, or
in the winter have driven a dog team pulling a heavily laden toboggan through
difficult country. And driving a dog
team is a misnomer, for usually the teamster must go first to the heavy work of
breaking trail and encourage his dogs to follow.
Listen to Father Cadieux’s description (taken from Father
Couture’s diary) of a portion of his first summer with Father Desautels. This was about May 20, 1920, when snow may be
expected and often ice is still in the Northern lakes.
“At sunset, Father
Desautels sticks into the ground a slender stick at the top of which burns a
candle held by a bit of birch bark; by its feeble flickering light he reads his
breviary. Father Couture ends his
reading, then rolled in his blanket, he goes to sleep. Not for long. A chilling wolf howl wakes him in the middle
of the night. His woollen blanket can’t cover at the same time both his
shoulders and his feet. He shivers the remainder of the night and it will be
the same quite often throughout this trip.”
“At daybreak the two travellers
launch their light canoe on the waters of Lake Harris; at the far end is a portage which leads to
Lake Cache. Ah! That portage, where is
it? They search for two hours among a
string of islands large and small; they
are mistaken twice in the direction, and at last, towards evening they find the
proper trail. Too tired to portage, they
pull into an island to camp. They pitch
their tent on a rocky place to be
dry. Bad weather threatens. Suddenly the
storm breaks. Beaten by rain, hail and
snow, they remain there several days, shivering. To complete their misery, Father Desautels
catches cold, one side of his face is swollen, one eye is almost closed. His stiffened jaw hinders him from eating. It
is a swelling broken open in five different places. I hope that the illness
will not prove mortal thinks Father Couture! Whilst he builds a big fire before
the tent he cautions his superior to be careful. And then as the storm diminishes in
intensity, Father Desautels ‘ good health returns.”
The second summer he returned North with Father Belanger. He
was learning the Ojibway tongue and how to travel in the North.
The third summer he was at Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island
learning the beautiful but difficult Ojibway language.
In 1924 he had mastered the Ojibway speech well enough to
conduct his missions in that tongue.
That summer he made a trip with Father Vincent Beaulieu of the College
du Sacre-Coeur at Sudbury – from Bucke (Savant Lake) on the north line to Lac
Saint-Joseph then back to Hearst and from Pagwa to Ogoki and return. On this trip as on all others the work and
the hardships and the lost time are incidental to the object of the trip viz
preaching, teaching catechism, blessing marriages, visiting the sick, consoling
the bereaved and settling differences.
In February, 1925 he was attacked by arthritis, a malady
that would continue to bother him periodically until his death.
In 1927 he used an outboard motor on his canoe and one
present resident says that when he returned after a summer on one of these odysseys
in the North that the motor would be
battered and worn out.
In 1931 he was accompanied on his trip by the Reverend
Father William Hingston, Provincial of the Jesuits of Upper Canada, and by a
seminarian, Father Alexandre Rolland, who was ordained in 1934.
From time to time he called in the Indians for a few days of
study. These study periods would last
three days with questions, answers, songs, prayers, etc.
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