at Midnapore, near Calgary,
in a home for poor old folk and children, the money to build which he
collected himself.

... And there is the story of Father Goiffon who was frozen near
Emerson on the eve of All Saints' Day, 1860. It was told to me by
Father Lestanc,[2] who, eighty years ago, was born at Brest in
Brittany. Father Lestanc has been fifty-five years in the West and
North, nineteen of which were spent at St. Boniface under Bishop Tache.
In spite of his extreme age, Lestanc has a hardy-moulded figure, and a
strong, clear voice. One cannot listen to him for long without being
impressed by his affectional force and broad reach of humanity. He is
not clear about things of yesterday, but take him back over the decades
and his memory rings true as a bell.

Goiffon had been at St. Paul, Minneapolis, making the yearly purchases
for his mission. Among other things he bought a city-bred horse to
carry him home. Fifty years ago St. Paul was seventeen days' journey
from Emerson, on the border-line, and folk travelled in caravans.

One day's journey from Emerson, Father Goiffon left the party that he
might push on the more rapidly and reach his mission post to say Mass
on All Saints' Day. To use a northern colloquialism, he travelled
light, carrying with him but one meal and no blanket. Neither had he
matches or an axe, for, bear in mind, he was only a young priest, and
he hoped to be in his shack by fall of night.

Soon after noonday there blew up a blinding snow-storm that made
progress impossible. A usurping, all-invading sheet of snow settled
down over the plains and turned the air into a white darkness. The man
tied his horse to a willow shrub and lay down in the snow. The hours
passed painfully on, but the youth kept his head buried in his saddle
that his face might not freeze. When at last he looked up, he found
his horse dead by his side. I told you a bit ago, it was a city-bred
horse and no trailer.

And now came the fight for life. The boy priest had no shelter but the
flaccid, unstrung body of his horse, already cold in death. I do not
know about the pain of the night, except that at the edge of day, one
foot and leg were frozen and the toes of the other, so that he could
not stand upright. I wonder if he heard the bell from his home in
France as he lay in the snow! They say men do. Something must have
been sounding in his ears, for he did not hear the caravan as it passed
him in the mor