Date Published:
March 2005

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

Congregation of the Holy Cross

Congregation of the Holy Cross . The congregation of the Holy Cross (C.S.C.) was founded at Le Mans, Prance, in 1837 by Father Moreau. The Canadian province of the congregation owes its origin to the reiterated requests made to Father Moreau by Bishop Bourget, of Montreal, in 1841 and the several years following. The first band of fathers and brothers reached St. Laurent, near Montreal, in 1847. The early years in Canada were marked by sacrifice and hardship, but the growth of the congregation was encouragingly steady. In the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, St. Laurent College was habitually attended by from two to four hundred students, many of them from the New England states and New York. Of these American students very many entered the priesthood. In addition to the college, the parish, and the parochial schools at St. Laurent, the congregation has, in the province of Quebec, colleges at Côte des Neiges, Farnham, St. Césaire, Sorel, and St. Aimé; large schools at Hochelaga, Côte des Neiges, Ste. Geneviève, and Pointe Claire; a novitiate at Ste. Geneviève; and a house of studies for professed ecclesiastics attending Laval University in Quebec city. The most notably effective work of the Holy Cross in Canada, however, has been accomplished in New Brunswick, where St. Joseph's College, established at Memramcook in 1864, by Father Camille Lefèbvre, has been the principal agency in raising the French Acadians from their former condition to one of professional, industrial, and social equality with their fellow-citizens of other nationalities.

Source : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., pp. 116-117.