Reverend Father Jean Marie Raphael Le Jeune, 0. M. I., was
born at Pleybert-Christ, Department of Finisterre, France, on
April 12, 1855. He attended the schools of his native village
and the neighbouring town of St. Pol de Leon. His theological
studies were taken in the college at Autun, Burgundy.
Ordained in 1879, he left shortly afterwards for the
Indian missions of British Columbia in company with Bishop
Durieu of that province. Stationed first at New Westminster,
and later at St . Mary's Mission, he ministered to the Indians
of the Fraser Canyon and to the Roman Catholics among the
workmen engaged in the construction of the Canadian Pacific
Railway. In 1882 he was transferred to St. Louis Mission at
Kamloops.
Kamloops, founded by David Stuart as a fur trading post
in 1812, had been an important point of the Hudson's Bay
Company on its fur brigade trail. The first missionary to
visit the Indians of this district had been Rev. Modeste
Demers in 1842. Irregular visits were made to the vicinity by
the Oblate Fathers after the establishment of the Mission of
the Immaculate Conception on Lake Okanagan in 1859, and a
resident Oblate missionary had been established at Kamloops in
1878.
From his headquarters at Kamloops Father Le Jeune
travelled a circuit of some six hundred miles visiting three
or four times a year the Indian camps of Shuswap, Nicola, Douglas Lake, Bonaparte, Deadman's Creek, North Thompson, and
Kamloops. A few days were spent at each centre during which
time religious exercises and instruction were carried on
according to a strict schedule. The liquor traffic among the
Indians was fought by the organization among them of Temperance
Societies. Under Father Le Jeune's guidance many churches were
built by the Indians throughout the district and furnished with
taste and discrimination. Occasionally, large gatherings were
held at central points, when hundreds of Indians would gather
for the enactment of such religious scenes as the Passion Play.
The steadfast devotion of Father Le Jeune to his task was such
that he achieved outstanding success as a missionary.
Early in his career Father Le Jeune set out to master the
various Interior Salish dialect in his district and eventually
he was able to preach to and converse with the Indians in their
own languages. In addition, he gained great facility in the
use of the Chinook jargon, a means of communication among the
various Indian tribes and the white settlers. In 1890 he
adapted the Duployan system of shorthand to Chinook and began to
teach his method to the Indians. His brightest students in turn
became teachers and within a few years he claimed that there
were in his district at least two thousand Indians reading and
writing shorthand.
The necessity of stimulating and maintaining interest
among his Indian students and of providing instructional material for them led to the establishment of the Kamloops
Wawa. This publication, often described as "the queerest
newspaper in the world" was first issued on May 2, 1891, and
continued until 1904. It was published in turn weekly,
monthly, and quarterly. From a circulation of one hundred
mimeographed copies at the outset Father Le Jeune raised it
to over three thousand copies a month with world-wide coverage.
Written in shorthand and Chinook, its material consisted of
Bible history, prayers, hymns, news of the various Indian
bands, and announcements of the priest's forthcoming visits.
Father Le Jeune retired from his mission in the summer of
1929, and died at New Westminster on November 21, 1930. He is
buried in the Oblate cemetery at Mission City. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/41492 |
| Date | January 1948 |
| Creators | Gurney, William Harold |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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