Mon Journal: The Journal and Memoir of Father Léon Doucet O.M.I. 1868 – 1890

The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate were the dominant Roman Catholic religious congregation to serve in western and northern Canada. After their arrival in the Red River Settlement in 1845, the Oblates established a series of missions that spread across the Prairies, the Mackenzie Basin and the Arctic. Hundreds of Oblates served in those missions but most of these individuals have been overlooked by history.

Léon Doucet is one of these forgotten missionaries and his is characteristic of the French Oblates who abandoned family and country to serve in the Canadian North-West. Ordained in St-Albert in 1870, Doucet has the distinction of being the first Catholic priest ordained in Alberta and he served in that province for an incredible sixty-nine years prior to his retirement in 1939. He was the first Oblate assigned to the Blood and Peigan Reserves. This publication is a reproduction of Father Leon Doucet’s journal/memoir of his work amongst the Métis, Plains Cree, Blackfoot, and Stoney bands of central and southern Alberta between 1868 and 1890.

Readers of this volume will be able to reflect on what Doucet experienced and described many years ago in the midst of his duties as a missionary.