AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 
their brilliant vestments, of les robes noirs, 
who accompanied the explorers of the seven- 
teenth century in these parts, and of the ad- 
miration and astonishment they caused among 
the savages, for whose conversion from pagan- 
ism they laboured so hard. Then the power 
behind them was a mighty power in the king- 
dom of France. Now they are outcasts, re- 
pudiated in their own home, the French Re- 
public, and are seeking liberty to practise their 
religion here in the new world. 
Of the present bishop of this region, Mon- 
seigneur Gustave Blanche, it is said in a pam- 
phlet describing his inauguration to office in 1905 
that ‘the violent persecution of 1903 found 
him at his post. Thrown on the street, like all 
the clergy that an impious government could 
no longer endure, he took, with a hundred of his 
brethren, the road to Canada in the month of 
August, 1903.’’! These were the Eudiste fathers, 
a branch founded by Jean Eudes. Up to 1867 
all the territory of Labrador was part of the 
1 Translation from “Les Fétes du sacre de Mgr. Gus- 
tave Blanche, evéque titulaire de Sicca, Vicarre, aposto- 
lique du Golf St.-Laurent. Célébres 4 Chicoutimi les 28 
et 29 Octobre, 1905.” Quebec, 1906. 
77 
