Michael Power: the Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier
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Document generated on 09/27/2021 4:31 p.m. Ontario History Michael Power: the Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier. By Mark G. McGowan W. J. Smyth Volume 97, Number 2, Fall 2005 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065886ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1065886ar See table of contents Publisher(s) The Ontario Historical Society ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Smyth, W. J. (2005). Review of [Michael Power: the Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier. By Mark G. McGowan]. Ontario History, 97(2), 228–230. https://doi.org/10.7202/1065886ar Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2005 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 228 Ontaro Hstory how Tecumseh’s legacy was remembered, further contextualized. manipulated, and constructed to suit These criticisms aside, the work is an specific purposes at specific times. These excellent example of the fruits that can be findings offer valuable insight into history had as a result of relentless archival dig- of memory, and parallels could have been ging and researching. The primary purpose made to such current literature as Daniel of the monograph was not an exercise in Francis’ National Dreams: Myth, Memory and historiography, but rather to evaluate and Canadian History or How Societies Remember, comment on the mysterious whereabouts edited by Paul Connerton. In addition, of Tecumseh’s bones – a task not easily further commentary regarding government handled – and St-Denis appears to have and private involvement in the unrestricted provided the most probable answer. excavation of Indian burial grounds would have rounded the study, shedding further William Campbell light on the attitudes of nineteenth- and McMaster University twentieth-century “civilized” society, as the Kennewick Man case did in the United Bibliography: Connerton, Paul, ed. How Societies Remember (New States. In his deconstruction of the ‘myths York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). and tales,’ St-Denis’ own ahistorical nihil- Francis, Daniel. National Dreams: Myth, memory ism overlooks many of these attractive and Canadian history (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp themes, and Tecumseh’s Bones begs to be Press, 1997). Michael Power: the Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier. By Mark G. McGowan. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005. xvii + 382 pp. $49.95 hardcover. ISBN 0-7735-2914-4. n 1 October 1847 Michael five years and, like the unfinished edifice Power, the first Catholic bishop of the cathedral, his plans for the diocese Oof Toronto, died of typhus in were in an early stage of fruition. Viewed his adopted city. He was laid to rest in the as a Famine martyr, Michael Power’s epis- crypt of the partially-built cathedral named copacy has attracted the attention of many in honour of his patron saint, Michael. In writers in the past, but this biography is that same year more than one thousand by far the most complete. In this exten- famine Irish also died of typhus and other sive work, officially commissioned by the diseases in the city, and Bishop Power archdiocese of Toronto, McGowan has is thought to have been infected while successfully identified and drawn upon personally ministering to the dying in the neglected archival records in Canada, municipal fever sheds. He had been the Ireland, Britain, France, and Rome, and in leader of the newly-established Catholic the process he has filled many gaps in the diocese of Toronto for little more than life of a prelate who was hitherto more book revews 229 renown for the manner of his death than among both the French and Irish set- the achievements of his life. tlers did little to comfort Power who This biography can be read from a was increasingly obsessed with the strict number of perspectives. On the human application of canon law. It was not until side it details the story of a young Hali- 1839 that he secured appointment to an fax boy who was sent in 1816, at the age established parish at Laprairie, across the of twelve, to Montreal where he would river from Montreal, and thereafter he be educated for eight years by the Sulpi- moved closer to the heart of ecclesiasti- cians, before proceeding to the Quebec cal power. seminary where he was ordained, in 1827. From the perspective of ecclesiastical The correspondence between the young politics the life of Michael Power affords Power and his family are suggestive of “a considerable insight into the attempts by mother’s vocation,” and there were occa- the Diocese of Quebec to be erected into sions when perseverance with his studies the sole Archdiocesan entity with control owed more to the demands of Mary Pow- over all bishoprics from Newfoundland er than to her son’s personal calling. Upon westward to Lake Superior. It is again his ordination, Power was transferred a story in which history and geography formally from his Halifax diocese to that collide. But within that nexus of church of Quebec and for the next fifteen years politics there remain some unanswered his fluency in French and English was questions. How did Power, having auda- put to good use as he ministered to par- ciously refused a vicar-general position in ishes on the a cross-appointment with Kingston and u n f o l d i n g Quebec dioceses, manage to repair the settlement damage to his career? By what means did frontiers of he emerge as the leader of the Anglophone early nine- priests in Quebec? Certainly, his transition teenth-cen- from frontier parish priest in 1839 to bish- tury Quebec. op-designate of Toronto two years later is He disliked, remarkable, all the more so as he had been with some selected, in the interim, to visit Rome and i n t e n s i t y, advise the Authorities on the case for a new the frontier diocese in Upper Canada. It would seem conditions that Power was not without considerable in which he political intuition, and as a canon lawyer found him- he was, in the eyes of the Hierarchy, an self – first ideal figure to put order not only on the i n D r u m - vast expanse of his new diocese but also mondville in upon the priests and people who lived and the Eastern worked within it. Townships, then in Petite-Nation (where In its significance, this biography tran- Louis-Joseph Papineau was a parishioner), scends church history to offer much of and finally in Ste-Martine, again in the interest to national historians and historical Eastern Townships. The lack of parish geographers alike. It fills many gaps in the infrastructure, poor financial support life of the founding bishop of Catholic for the clergy, and lax religious practices Toronto and it has much to offer on the 230 Ontaro Hstory wider connotations of contemporary Kildare and Leighlin. But these are minor Canadian life. Purists might note that the quibbles about a biography that is substan- mercury wash referred to in Grosse Isle did tive and independent in content. not come into operation until twenty years after the Famine arrivals, and in reference W. J. Smyth to Irish dioceses, Carlow is mistaken for National University of Ireland Maynooth. Drawing on the Land: The New World Travel Diaries and Watercolours of Millicent Mary Chap- lin, 1838-1842. Edited, with an Introduction, by Jim Burant. Manotick, Ontario: Penumbra Press, 2004. 166 pp. $39.95 softcover. ISBN 1-894131-61-4. crapbooks became a rage among the of considerable interest. Victorian leisured classes but are un- Married to a highranking officer in the Sdervalued by descendants, archivists, Coldstream Guards, Millicent Mary Chaplin and researchers, and may face the ignominy moved in the best circles, chaperoned by of dismemberment by those interested in the Family Compact in Toronto, invited to just one picture or entry. Editor Jim Burant Governors’ and Bishops’ mansions across rescues from such a fate the travel writings the land, befriended by Samuel Cunard in of Millicent Mary Chaplin, the middle-aged, Halifax and by American academics on childless wife who accompanied her officer her travels. In calling her an anglophile husband to Canada in the wake of the 1837 xenophobe who ‘put the classes in their Rebellion. Burant supplements the text with place,’ the editor seems too hasty. Certainly some ninety of Mrs. Chaplin’s watercolours Chaplin was a product of her time and and his own well-researched endnotes, place, a Lincolnshire Anglican who arranged explanations of historical context, and in- shipboard services and balked at questions formation on travel and botanical writing such as “The Queen, what sort of bird is in the Canadas. The illustrations are mainly she?” She shared the usual English distaste of scenes in and around Quebec. Their for the American habits of public spitting, value is limited, since the best of Chaplin’s asking strangers personal questions, and work has been previously published, and in frantic dining (fast food is not new). She general it boasts neither artistic merit nor wondered though, if the gobbling arose precision. However, the illustrations and from poor implements such as two-tined explanations complement an engaging but forks.