h he
asked for some missionaries. In response to this appeal a certain
young Grouard was sent to Fort Garry. When Bishop Tache looked over
the slender stripling he said: "I asked for a man; they sent me a boy."
But a year later he wrote again: "Please send me more boys." This was
fifty years ago, and from that day to this the northern world has had
but one opinion of Grouard--he makes good. He is a worker who sticks
to his text. To-day, he is the head of the Catholic missions in the
far north, and his diocese, until lately, included the very Yukon.

He is seventy-seven years old (but we don't believe it), with a leonine
head, an unrazored face and a chest like a draught horse; an erect man
who commands the instant attention of whatever company he enters.
Assuredly, he is the type of the sound mind in the sound body. It is
not to be wondered that his attractive personality made him the
cynosure of all eyes, and that his name was on every tongue when,
several years ago, he went to England, there to attend a great
conference of his Church.

Bishop Grouard is alert in manner and has a kindly consideration for
the poorest person. Attend you, sirs and madams, to observe the Old
World courtesy in its highest perfection, you must see it in the person
of a French gentleman who holds a position of honor in the far, far
north, it is an absolutely truthful courtesy, that has its roots in a
big warm heart, so that it becomes the very bone and fibre of the man.
By way of placating our more southerly dignitaries in what may seem an
invidious comparison, it may be urged that Bishop Grouard's urbanity
has never suffered such cross-currents as the municipal watering cart,
speed-limit fines, or the bill collectors, for, as yet, these
well-conceived but ill-approved institutions are entirely unknown in
the strangely blissful regions north of 55 deg.

It is for the fiftieth anniversary of Bishop Grouard's consecration as
a priest that all of us have gathered from Edmonton to Hudson's Hope to
celebrate. We are assembled at Grouard on Lesser Slave Lake, the
missionary post that was built here forty-nine years ago and named
after the hero of this day. Our assembly is what smart society
reporters would describe as "mixed," and the word would be correctly
used; nevertheless, the interest and colour of this occasion are in no
inconsiderable measure due to this very fact. Besides, ours is a
goodly fellowship.

Here we have Father Or