LA STATUE DU PÈRE DE BRÉBEUF

FACADE DU PALAIS LÉGISLATIF, À QUÉBEC

PASTATUE DUPÈRE DE BRÉBEUF

FAÇADE DU PALAIS LÉGISLATIF, À QUÉBEC

E Père Jésuite Jean de Brébeuf arrivé au Canada en 1625

[E: fut missionnaire pendant quinze ans chez les Hurons.

C’est à la bourgade Saint-Louis, au printemps de 1649,

qu’il fut fait prisonnier par les Iroquois et mis à mort après avoir passé par les plus horriblés tourments.

L'abbé Ferland a dit du Père de Brébeuf que dans toute l’histoire du Canada on ne rencontre pas de plus grande figure. L’historien protestant Parkman n’est pas moins élogieux pour cet intrépide missionnaire :

“ Thus died Jean de Brébeuf, the founder of the Huron mission, its truest hero, and its greatest martyr. He came of a noble race—the same, it is said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel ; but never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling, with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and “his death was the astonishment of his murderers ”. In him an enthusiastic devotion was grafted on an heroic nature. His bodily endowments were as remarkable as the temper of his mind. His manly proportions, his strength, and his endurance, which incessant fasts and penances could not undermine, had always won for him the respect of the Indians, no less than a courage unconscious of fear, and yet redeemed from rashness by a cool and vigorous judgment (1).”

La statue du Père de Brébeuf est l’œuvre du sculpteur Alfred Laliberté.

(1) Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, vol. IT, p. 491.