Our founding stories--where do we fit in?

When I went to elementary school back in the 1950s, I remember drawing pictures on construction paper of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock and the first Thanksgiving.  I remember the stories of the explorers like Christopher Columbus.  In those days, men like Columbus were a source of pride, not shame.

I so much identified with these stories as a young American child, that I felt like I had come over on the Mayflower, despite the fact that my mother was an immigrant and so were my father's parents. My ethnicity is Slavic, but I identified more with the Magna Carta than the Czar's oppression of serfs or the Conmmunist Revolution, a bad thing in how it impacted our family.

Though I have been living in Canada for more than 30 years, I only became a Canadian citizen a relatively short time ago because the American founding stories had such a hold on me.  Recently,  however,I had an occasion to familiarize myself with some of Canada's founding stories when I journeyed to Quebec City, which is celebrating the 400th anniversary this year.

In June, the Catholic Church is holding a big international Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City to coincide with the 400th anniversary celebrations.  My business reasons for going to Quebec City included writing a series of advance stories on the Congress.   Cardinal  Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec, has said he hopes this Congress will revive not only Canada's Christian roots but those of the whole continent, because Quebec is where the evangelization of the whole continent began. I hope he is right and this revival will take place.  It's sorely needed.

To prepare for the trip, I began to read up on the Canadian martyrs, eight Jesuit priests who were tortured and murdered while bringing the Gospel to aboriginal peoples. I discovered on the web the Jesuit Relations, their letters back to France about what they encountered in the New World. In them they described the settlement of Quebec, the climate, the Huron and Iroquois Confederacy native tribes and their housing, clothing and behavior.  These letters seemed aflame with the love of Christ, though definitely not politically correct!

I also did an interview with a priest who is helping to coordinate activities to commemorate the first Catholic bishop in North America, Monseigneur Francois de Laval.  I walked the streets of Old Quebec, North America's only walled city, went into the courtyard of the seminary Laval founded, and heard about how Laval and the missionaries traveled by canoe up and down the St. Lawrence River. Laval reportedly loved the people he served, whether they were French settlers or native people, and constantly plied the rivers to visit far-flung parishes. The missionaries traveled along the Ottawa River as well.

What amazed me were the hardships these missionaries faced willingly to spread the Gospel. The Jesuits spent eight to 10 years just learning the languages. I think it was 12 years before they had one baptism!
Just the description of the food they had to eat---a soup full of animal hair and stones in addition to the bones and tough meat--was enough to challenge my love of comfort and ease.

I began to feel inspired by the example of these men, as if they were invisible witnesses surrounding me and interceding for Canada.  The trip felt like a pilgrimage.  And I felt like I was growing some new roots, into a new founding story. (Without uprooting my American roots!)

I had the privilege of interviewing Cardinal Ouellet while in Quebec City and he suggested I read Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock to learn more about Bishop Laval and the early Quebec settlement. My copy of the book just arrived and I have started reading it.

Here's a passage from Cather's novel that sang:

On the opposite shore of the river, just across from the proud rock of Quebec, the black pine forest came down to the water's edge; and on the west, behind the town, the forest stretched no living man knew how far. That was the dead, sealed world of the vegetable kingdom, an uncharted continent choked with interlocking trees, living, dead, half-dead, their roots in bogs and swamps, strangling each other in a slow agony that had lasted for centuries. The forest was suffocation, annihilation; there European man was quickly swallowed up in silence, distance, mould, black mud, and the stinging swarms of insect life that bred in it.  The only avenue of escape was along the river. The river was the one that that lived, moved, glittered, changed,--a highway along which men could travel, taste the sun and open air, feel freedom, join their fellows, reach the open sea....reach the world even!

Yet of course for the native inhabitants, the forest had a far different meaning!

It's sad though that today the Christian aspect of the story of North America is being airbrushed out.  I asked my son who was born here and attended elementary school in the 80s whether he had ever heard of the Canadian martyrs or the Jesuit missionaries. No, they learned only about the fur trade and the Hudson Bay Company.  To me that's like learning about Christopher Columbus and the Pilgrims but only hearing about the search for gold and commerce, and omitting the Pilgrims'  desire to find religious freedom.

At what point and how do we adopt the stories of others and make them our own?  At some point in the distant past, my ancestors worshipped idols and probably carried out blood feuds and honor killings.  But then they became Christianized.  Same with Europeans. It's false to say Christianity is a white European religion.  It originated in the Middle East and predominated in North Africa long before it hit the barbarian tribes of Europe and transformed their societies over time.

When I think of what the first missionaries to North America faced, I feel inspired because they faced far greater obstacles to spreading the Good News than we do.  Here at least we have a beautiful inheritance to draw on--one they bequeathed to us.  I felt recharged and renewed after my trip to Quebec. And much more deeply anchored in Canada.  Even though I am not French, or Quebecoise, I have claimed these stories as my own.

What stories are important to you?

Comments

[Madison Richards]

What a great post, Deb! Such thought provoking questions!

There's something so important about roots and foundations. Knowing the stories that built a place or a people is part and parcel to knowing the people themselves, for we are all a product of our history.

Thanks for this!

[Jeanne Damoff]

Love the Cather quote. Your recent adventures sound fascinating, Deb. Thanks for sharing!

I wish I'd had history teachers who made the past story instead of fact memorization. Unfortunately, as it was, history never captured my imagination over the course of my formal education, and I'm ashamed to say that I've not taken the time or made the effort to thoroughly research my heritage. I do know my personal ancestry is a mix, mostly comprised of families that came to America in its infancy from the British Isles. The tidbits I've heard are intriguing. My spiritual ancestry is also mostly a mystery to me. Nice to know that in heaven there won't be any gaps in the record or politically correct revisionism. :)

[violet]

You inspire me to dig into these Canadian stories!