Martyrdom of Father Marchand and Father Fafard
FAFARD, LÉON-ADÉLARD (baptized Léon-Dollard), priest, Oblate of Mary Immaculate and missionary, born June 8, 1850 at Saint-Cuthbert, Lower Canada, son of Charles Fafard and Tersile (Alexine) Olivier, died April 2, 1885 at Frog Lake, Alberta.
Léon-Adélard Fafard studied at L’Assomption College from 1864 to 1872. After a year of novitiate with the Oblate Fathers at Lachine, Quebec, from June 27, 1872 to June 27, 1873, he pronounced his perpetual vows on June 29, 1874. Recruited for the West by Father Albert Lacombe*, he arrived at St. Albert Mission (Alberta) on September 5, 1875 and was ordained sub-deacon on September 21, deacon on November 30 and priest on December 8. A week later, he was sent to the mission at Beef Lake (Buffalo Lake, Alberta), a wintering station for Métis coming from distant points to hunt buffalo. He spent the winter there, then returned to St. Albert to return to Lac du Bœuf on October 30, 1876. With the disappearance of the buffalo from the Canadian prairies, this mission was abandoned, and on July 4, 1877, Bishop Vital-Justin Grandin* of Saint-Albert sent Fafard to found the mission of Saint-Alexandre-de-Rivière-qui-Barre on Lac La Nonne, Alberta, where he built a chapel-house. He then returned to Saint-Albert and left with his superior, Jean-Marie-Joseph Lestanc, for Fort Pitt (Fort Pitt, Saskatchewan), where they arrived in August and established the mission of Saint-François-Régis among the Woodland Crees.
During the summers and autumns of 1878 and 1879, Fafard accompanied Métis groups in their buffalo hunt. Faced with the lack of success of these expeditions, he tried to persuade them to start farming the fields and raising horned animals, setting an example himself by cultivating the soil at Saint-François-Régis, but without much success. Fafard and Lestanc used their winters to visit the posts dependent on the mission. They acted as peacemakers among the Métis and Indians who had become sullen and disturbed by the hunger that plagued them, with the federal government turning a deaf ear to almost all their requests for help.
On May 5, 1883, after six years at Fort Pitt, Fafard moved to Frog Lake, presumably in anticipation of the impending abandonment of the fort, as the signing of Treaty 6 in 1876 with the Cree, who had been given reserves away from the forts, had diminished the importance of the site. On August 10, Fafard was appointed superior of the mission and of the Long and Onion Lakes mission. He settled in the same place chosen by Father Jean-Baptiste Thibault* where, in 1843, he had a cabin built. Very modest, the Lac La Grenouille residence also served as a school where Fafard taught about twenty students while performing his many other duties. Not far from there was the log church, a well, a shed and a stable. When Fafard’s work became too heavy, in the fall of 1883, Félix-Marie Marchand was added to the mission and remained there until October 1884 to learn the Cree language and to run the school. Sent to Lac Oignon where he was to build a permanent mission, Marchand returned to Lac La Grenouille at the end of March 1885 with some Lac Oignon Indians to take part in the Holy Week religious ceremonies.
At that time, there was a reserve at Frog Lake with three bands of Woodland Cree. Big Bear [Mistahimaskwa], Grand Chief of the Plains Cree, and about twenty families came to settle there, but they did not officially belong to the reserve. On March 31, five days after Louis Riel’s victory at Duck Lake (Duck Lake, Saskatchewan) and despite being warned of the grave danger they were in, the whites and Métis of Frog Lake did not want to take refuge at Fort Pitt, and Fafard refused to abandon his herd altogether. Emboldened by the victory of the Métis, Gros Ours’ men, led in particular by Esprit Errant [Kapapamahchakwew], their warlord, decided to attack: on April 2, they burst into the church at Frog Lake at the time of the Holy Thursday celebrations. Esprit Errant ordered the people of the mission to accompany him to the camp of Gros Ours. Fathers Fafard and Marchand walked at the head of the column in prayer. The Indian agent, Thomas Trueman Quinn, a mixed-blood, refused to follow and was shot dead. This signalled an explosion of violence and the Métis Charles Gouin, John Williscroft, John Gowanlock and John Delaney were killed. At the call of Mrs. Theresa Delaney, Fafard ran to give absolution to her husband, but he had hardly finished when a bullet fatally wounded him; Marchand, William Gilchrist and George Dill suffered the same fate.
Some Métis placed the bodies of the two missionaries and those of Gowanlock and Delaney in the church vault. Later, the remains of the two priests were buried in the cemetery, then transferred in 1891 to the cemetery of the new mission at Onion Lake, established in 1887, and finally, many years later, to the Oblate cemetery at St. Albert.
