From the Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Center:
Father Thériault's legacy became attached to Northern Ontario when in 1910, the freshly ordained young man was sent to the community of Cobalt from Rimouski Quebec.
His move to Timmins two years later proved to be very significant indeed and was accompanied by many firsts; he served as the communities’ very first Catholic priest and often gave mass in Golden City to faithful prospectors, eventually earning him the moniker of “Évêque des Mineurs” or “The Miner’s Bishop”.
He also was responsible for establishing L’École Séparée Bilingue in 1913, a veritable bastion of French culture and language. This school got its start in an inhospitable political climate as Regulation 17, which prohibited French language instruction in Ontario, had been enforced since June 1912, painfully deepening the rift between Anglophones and Francophones.
An ardent defender of French instruction, Thériault continued to nurture his pupils and larger francophone community in the region.
His mission was sponsored by a very powerful ally and personal fried, Noah Timmins himself. Timmins, a Catholic man of French extraction, largely founded the construction of the St-Antoine de Padue, which was the bishop’s seat in the community.
Riding out uncertainty and a fraught period of discord and protest, L’École Séparée Bilingue survived and in 1927 bilingual schools were officially recognized.
Each week, the Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre provides TimminsToday readers with a glimpse of the city’s past.
Find out more of what the Timmins Museum has to offer at www.timminsmuseum.ca and look for more Remember This? columns here.
