Catholic Mission In Canada

Many families have persons in their past generations who were noted for some achievements or other and have remained in the family memory, with anecdotes or exemplary stories. I grew up hearing often about one such relative, Charles Hughes Gauthier, who became Archbishop of Kingston and later of Ottawa, in the early part of the 20^th century. His mother was Mary McKinnon, and my mother was Dorothy McKinnon, both of Alexandria in eastern Ontario. So “the bishop,” as my aunts and uncles referred to him, was my mother’s great-uncle, and was used to speaking to the family in Gaelic, the family’s native tongue. But he worked masterfully in English and French, so much so that the Anglophones of Ontario thought of him as French and the Francophones considered him “anglais.”  

Archbishop Gauthier was held up for us as a prominent vocational example, who gave himself completely to the Church, and was ordained in 1867, just as Canada was becoming a nation. He was head of the Kingston diocese when Archbishop Fergus McEvay, his close associate, was establishing the Catholic Church Extension Society, and he supported the cause of missions in Canada until his death in 1922. 

But in my background there are other religious vocations we were reminded of;

especially Sister Mary Campbell, of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph at Kingston. In my parents’ generation, my father’s own sister was a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph of Sault Ste Marie. She was Sister St. Anne (Kennedy), and actually did missionary service in the 1940s and 1950s in Wikwemikong, Little Current and Manitoulin Island. She was present to us as children and we were continually exposed to her witness of consecrated life.

Two of my second-cousins also became Sisters of St. Joseph, and served as missionaries, and two other cousins were priests, one with the Oratory in Toronto, and the other with the Passionists in Montreal. And one of my uncles, Finlay MacLeod, was a permanent deacon in the Diocese of Sault Ste Marie in Ontario until his death a few years ago.

Young people of today are fortunate if they have a witness of devotion and dedication to Christ in their own family, in the priesthood, or women in religious life, or permanent deacons, or religious brothers. The world we live in has a dire need of examples of commitment and perseverance in faith, and men and women who give themselves generously to God by serving others in prayer, sacrifice, virtue, labour, faith-witness, knowledge of God’s desire for all, and the ability to be with ordinary people on their life journeys. 

In the pages of the Fall 2010 issue of Catholic Missions In Canada magazine, look for such exemplars of vocational giving, and you will realize how the wonderful task of sustaining the missions of this nation are fulfilled.