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History of the County of Middlesex, Canada
History of the County of Middlesex Canada Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. ESTABLISHMENT OF CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES. In this chapter the story of the beginning of the various churches, now represented in the c... more »ounty, is told, and their establishment sketched, leaving the history of their progress to be given in that of the townships, cities 01 incorporated towns, where such organizations exist to-day. In a civilized country the Church is generally contemporary with settlements, and for this reason the chapter holds the next place to that dealing with the first occupation of this district by white people. Tfi£ Catholic Church—The Catholic Church in Upper Canada dates back to 1615, when four missionaries came with Cham plain. One, at least, was a Recollet priest, Rev. Joseph Le Caron, and he it was, who, in 1615-16, accompanied the Governor in his tour round Canada, via the Ottawa, Nippissing, Georgian Bay, and the chain of lakes and rivers, from Lake Huron to the St. Lawrence, via Lake Simcoe. He is said to have established a Mission near the foot of Lake Huron. Eight years after, Father Nicholas Veil and Brother Gabriel Sagard traversed the same district, and in 1634 the Jesuit fathers, Breboeuf and Daniel, established a Mission on Lake Huron shore among the Hurons, with whom they travelled from Quebec, where the Hures were visiting. The Abbe D'Urfe and venerable Dolliere de Kleus, of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, established their Mission at the Bay of Quinte about this time, and still later, the Chapel on Lake Huron, where la Riviere Aux Saubles was founded, and, it is said, another at the Straits, just north of Sarnia, about the time Fort St. Joseph was established, where the village of Fort Gratiot now stands. In June, 1671, De Courcelles sent messages to the Indian Missions in Ontario advising them of his approach, and in...« less