Date Published:
March 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Clerics of St. Viateur

Clerics of St. Viateur (C.S.V.), a congregation devoted to education and altar attendance which was founded in France, and has later been established in Belgium , Spain, Canada, and the United States. The tuition given by its members comprises all branches of knowledge, and therefore extends from the country school to the university. The congregation first takes care of under-privileged children, children of the poorer classes, orphans, and the deaf and dumb. The first foundations established in Canada were Berthier College (1848); the Classical College at Rigaud (1850); the Deaf and Dumb Institute at Montreal (1852); Saint Louis School, at Montreal (1853); and Boucherville College (1856). By 1935, the Clerics of Saint Viateur in the province of Montreal (the provincial residence is at Outremont ) had come to own fifty establishments. In answer to the invitation of Pope Pius XI, they extended their field of apostleship, in 1931, as far as the pagan missions of Manchuria ( China ); they work together with the priests of the foreign missions, in the prefecture of Szepinghai . They direct Saint Joseph Institute, at Otterburne ( Manitoba ), and Notre Dame des Champs orphanage, at Sully (Témiscouata). In this locality, they affiliated to their order, in 1931, the Congregation of the Brothers of Notre Dame des Champs, which had been founded at St. Damien of Buckland, in 1902.

Three Clerics of Saint Viateur of Canada (Father Beaudoin, Brother Martel, and Brother Bernard) left Joliette in 1865 to go to found a mission at Bourbonnais, Illinois. Saint Viateur College was opened at Bourbonnais in 1868. This was the origin of the American province of Chicago, organized in 1882.

Source  : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., pp. 82-83.