CCHA Report, 13 (1945-46), 71-106 A Sketch of the Life and Times of the Right Reverend Angus Bernard MacEachern, the First Bishop of the Diocese of Charlottetown by EMMET J. MULLALLY, M. D. A sketch of the life and times of the Right Rev. Angus1 (or Æneas) Bernard MacEachern, a pioneer missionary priest and the first Bishop of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, may be of interest to members and friends of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association. He was born in Scotland in 1759, thirteen years after the Battle of Culloden, when the penal laws against Catholics in the British Isles were as severe as they were in the times of El i zabeth and Cromwell. His seminary training was received in Spain; education was then denied Catholics in England, Ireland and Scotland, and professional training, in particular, training for the priesthood, had been expressly forbidden under pain of death ever since penal laws against Catholics were instituted and which were to continue until close to the end of the eighteenth century, a period of about 250 years. He came to Prince Edward Island in the year 1790 when it was still called St. John’s Island. He endured innumerable hardships and privations in attending to the spiritual needs of the Catholics of Prince Edward Island, of Cape Breton Island, parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. He was made a Bishop in the year 1819. He founded a classical college; its successor is now a University; and after forty-five years -of missionary work he died at the age of 76 years, worn out by his labours for the care of souls scattered over a territory occupying a great part of the present Maritime Provinces of Canada. Bishop MacEachern laid the foundations of the Diocese of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, which, in proportion to its population, is believed to have given more vocations to the religious life than any other Diocese in North America. It is not known, with certainty, the number of young ladies from the Diocese who have entered the religious life and become teachers or nurses, or who did, or are doing other types off service in convents throughout Canada and the United States and other countries, but the number is large, in proportion to the population of the Diocese, judging by those who have become members of one religious congregation of women, namely the 1 The name Angus is the Anglicized form of the Gaelic name Æneas. — 71 — Congregation of Notre Dame, whose Mother House is in Montreal. Mother St. Gerald, Assistant to the Mother General of the Congregation de Notre Dame, and herself an Islander, looked up the records and found that over three hundred members of their order had been born and educated on Prince Edward Island up to the present time. Father James Donahoe, Pastor of St. Bridget’s Parish, Minneapolis, in the state of Minnesota, U.S.A., who was born and educated on Prince Edward Island, in the 1935 edition of his book entitled “ Prince Edward Island Priests” gives with biographical sketches, an impressive list of one hundred and one priests, bishop and archbishops, who were born on Prince Edward Island but who labored or are laboring in the Sacred Ministry outside of their native province, in Dioceses on the mainland of Canada and the United States. Father Donahoe states that his list is incomplete, as there were a number who failed to give him the necessary permission for inclusion; neither did Father Donahoe include those bishops and priests who practised their sacred ministry on Prince Edward Island; his purpose being to tell about the life and work of priests and bishops who labored outside their native province. For that reason, he did not include Bishop MacEachern, the first Bishop, or his seven successors, or the hundreds of priests who gave service in the Diocese of Charlottetown itself. If then there is a Canadian Province, the smallest of the nine, with a population in the year 1941 of 95,047; of which 42,743 or less than 45% of the total are Catholics; if this the smallest, and only Island Province of Canada, has given to the Catholic Church more vocations to the religious life, in proportion to size and population, than any other diocese of Canada or the United States; if, in addition to the nuns and priests, bishops and archbishops who were born and received their col l eg e education on the Island and who labored either in their native diocese or in other dioceses in Canada or the United States, the first Cardinal of the English speaking Catholics of Canada, in the person of His Eminence Cardinal McG u i g an, is also a native of Prince Edward Island, then there must b e reasons for these visi b le manifestations of grace among a comparatively small number of Catholic people; perhaps one of the reasons may be found in the life and work of the first Bishop of Charlottetown, the Right Rev. Angus (or Æneas) Bernard MacEachern. The Diocese of Charlottetown since 1842 comprises the Province of Prince Edward Island and the Magdalen Islands, which Islands are situated about fifty miles north of the Eastern part of Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Politically the Magdalen Islands are part of the Province of Quebec, and are represented by one member in the Provincial parliament of that province. The total Catholic population of the Diocese of Charlottetown in 1945 was 46,426; 42,743 are on Prince Edward Island and 3,683 on the Magdalen Islands. The diocesan clergy number 79; there are also six priests of the Redemptorist order labouring in the Diocese. The number of churches with resident priests is 47, and missions with churches 12. From October — 72 — 1946, the Magdalen Islands will form part of the Diocese of Gaspe, Quebec, according to notification from Rome appearing in the Press. Prince Edward Island in the southern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is somewhat crescent shaped, about 145 miles long and from 3 to 30 miles wide, with many indentations of the sea along its coastline; in area it is 2,184 square miles, containing over one million acres of red colored, well-cultivated soil; there is no great wealth and there is no poverty among the people; two essential and basic industries engage the great majority of the population, namely, farming and fishing; the Island has no coal or oil or iron or other minerals; there are no great waterways to produce electric power; and because of the absence of these, there is no so called “ Industrial expansion” with its attendant evils. According to the Federal census of 1941, the population along religious and racial lines is divided as follows: TOTAL CATHOLICS PROTESTANTS Indians 258 258 0 French 14,799 14,485 314 Scotch 32,669 8,489 24,180 Irish 18,459 16,017 2,442 English 27,383 3,155 24,228 Other Races 1,479 339 1,149 Total population 95,047 42,743 52,304 of P.E.I. The census of 1941 showed that the Protestant population of the Island is divided into about ten sects of which the United Church of Canada with about 24,000 adherents, the Presbyterians 14,700, and the Anglicans and Baptists with 5,000 each, are the largest groups; of the Catholic population, those of Irish descent form the largest number with 16,017 people, the French have 14,485; the Scotch 8,459; the English 3,155; Catholics whose ancestry is mainly from the British Isles number about 28,000; Catholics of French origin number 14,485, all of whom speak English and the majority speak French, the language of their ancestors. The population of the Island during the past seventy-five years has not exceeded 108,000 and has not gone below 85,000; the proportion of Catholics to Protestants during that period remained substantially what it is at the present time. The Micmac Indians, a branch of the Algonquins, were the original inhabitants of Prince Edward Island. They were the first to give the Island a name: it was Abegwet, meaning “ rocked by the Waves”; it is claimed the Indians also called their Island home Minegoo which means “ The Island” thus anticipating, by about four hundred years, the marked tendency of natives of the only insular Province of Canada to speak of it as if no other island — 73 — existed; St. John’s Island (Isle Saint Jean) was the name bestowed by the French; it is generally held that the French navigator and explorer Jacques Cartier, who sailed from St. Malo in Britanny, France, in April of 1534, was the leader of the first group of Europeans to set foot on the Island, with the view of claiming it for the crown of France; he first saw the north shore of the eastern part of the Island towards the end of June of 1534 and his three small ships skirted the shoreline in a westerly direction until he lost sight of the land; he and his crew landed at different places along the north ,coast of the Island and in his written account of his findings he was well pleased with what he saw. He did not know then, that he had discovered an island. St. John’s Island remained a possession of France from 1534 to 1763 a period of 229 years; in 1763 the Island became a Bri t ish colony; in 1873, it became a Province of Confederated Canada.