Archbishop Sylvain Lavoie, O.M.I., of Keewatin-Le Pas, blesses confirmand.
My first trip to the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas was as an scholastic in 1972 when I was asked to come and run a boy’s camp in the bush near Île-à-la-Crosse with only a boatload of supplies, five tents and two older boys as helpers. I promptly fell in love with this diocese full of forests, spring-fed lakes, rivers, fine white sand and huge rock outcroppings.
A few years later, as a young Oblate missionary priest assigned to the northern Oblate Province of Keewatin, I came to love the people: Métis and Treaty Cree, and Dene and Ojibway-Cree, as well as Euro-Canadians who came, stayed and became northerners.
My first trip from Beauval, Saskatchewan, to the bishop’s house in The Pas in 1976, made me aware of the distances in this archdiocese that is one of the largest in Canada. The diocese itself covers northern Saskatchewan, except for the northwest corner; northern Manitoba except for the northeast corner, and into northwest Ontario. The size of the diocese is 430,000 square kilometres. The total population is around 125,000 people, with a Catholic population of around 45,000, 72 per cent of them aboriginal.
To travel to the Dene community of Dillon, on the west side of the diocese, I have to drive through the Diocese of Prince Albert in Saskatchewan. To arrive at the Cree community of Sandy Lake, Ontario, on the east side of our diocese, I have to drive through the Archdiocese of Winnipeg in Manitoba and fly out of there.
One of our aging priests has no vehicle because he covers a circuit of four fly-in communities each month. Another circulates by vehicle between five communities, a round-trip of over a thousand kilometres on both paved and gravel roads. I routinely put 5,000 kilometres a month on my vehicle, visiting the 40 communities accessible by road. I fly into the remaining ten that are accessible only by air. The winter road, if the weather is cold enough, is not a feasible option.
The previous four bishops faced the same challenge of geography. The first bishop, Ovide Charlebois, O.M.I., was truly an itinerant missionary. Father Gaston Carriere, O.M.I., in his book Le Père Du Keewatin, describes a trip made closer to home in 1911. He writes that Bishop Charlebois left The Pas in the month of May and returned home four months later. During this trip, he travelled 400 km by train, 130 km in a big truck without springs on terrible roads; 3,200 km by canoe, 80 km on foot across portages and thick forest. He slept 60 nights on the ground in a small canvas tent. He visited 14 missions comprised of 4,500 First Nations Catholics. Six of the missions had never been visited by a bishop. He preached seven retreats of four to six days and confirmed 1,100 First Nations persons whose dispositions were edifying. He noted with sadness the inadequate number of missionaries. In a dozen communities, the people were asking for a priest.
Given the high percentage of aboriginal peoples in our archdiocese, much of the ministry is to these peoples. We do not have a Native Pastoral Council because our Diocesan Pastoral Council is naturally made up mostly of aboriginal peoples. The northern aboriginal culture is largely an internalized culture. It is characterized not so much by costumes and ceremonies as in the South, but rather in a subtle way of looking at life with very different attitudes to time, money, humour, life, death and most other values, such as the worldview of the sacred rather than the scientific, with a strong emphasis on the relational.
Much of my earlier ministry consisted of addictions-awareness sessions, Christopher Leadership course to inculcate self-esteem, Search weekends for youth, and parish renewal sessions. Our present focus is on lay formation, ministry training, promotion of local vocations, youth ministry, healing of life’s hurts and a re-evangelization thrust. We rely heavily on Catholic Missions In Canada to help us attain these ministry goals, as well as to cover the high cost of heating buildings and sustenance for our pastoral ministers.
We are grateful to Catholic Missions In Canada for their generous assistance that makes our ministry possible, as well as to all those who helped to organize and carry out the memorable Tastes of Heaven Gala event last spring.
(Archbishop Sylvain Lavoie, O.M.I., is Archbishop of Keewatin-Le Pas, which includes northern Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba, and northwest Ontario.)
