Yukon who is who

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Joseph-Camille Lefebvre
	
Joseph-Camille Lefebvre was born in Quebec.((Vincent J. McNally, //The Lord’s Distant Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British Columbia.// University of Alberta, 2000: 317.)) Lefebvre and Augustin Dumas attended the College of Oblates in Lachine, and Lefebvre was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church in Ottawa by Bishop Clut.((Yann Herry, //La Francophane: une richesse nordique / Northern Portraits.// L’Association franco-yukonaise, 2004: 19.))

Father Lefebvre was recruited to work in the high arctic when clerical suppression in France made it difficult to find recruits in that country. Lefebvre was asked to recruit the Inuit in the Mackenzie Delta and he prayed for help in remaining zealous. In June 1890, Lefebvre was sent to join Father Constant-Alarie Giroux for a summer at Fort McPherson, a stronghold for the Anglicans where the Inuit visited to trade every year. George Greenland, an Inuk from the Delta’s outer eastern channel endeavoured to teach Lefebvre the language. He returned to McPherson in 1891 and 1892, still unequipped to minister to the Inuit. Isaac Stringer, who arrived north in 1892 with the same mission proved to be a formidable opponent. In the winter of 1894-95, Father Lefebvre started building a mission at the mouth of the Arctic Red River and the Oblates abandoned their buildings at Fort McPherson.((Walter Vanast, //“Vomissements:// The Rhetoric of Western Arctic Mission Competition 1890 -1925.” Western Arctic Citation Project, Academia, 2025: 3-4, 6-7.))Lefebvre later expressed the opinion that it was impossible to convert the Inuvialuit.((Frederic B. Laugrand and Jarich G, Oosten, //Inuit, Oblate Missionaries, and the Grey Nuns in the Keewatin, 1865-1965.// McGill-Queen’s Press, 2019: 26.)) 
	
Reassigned from the north, Lefebvre arrived in Dawson with a travelling chapel including Communion wine and vestments. The resident Jesuit priest, Father Judge, welcomed him as he was once again able to say Mass. Father Judge had money problems and the Oblates were more than willing to take over responsibility for the territory.((Charlotte Gray, //Gold Diggers.// HarperCollins Publishers, 2010: 197-199.)) In 1898, Father Lefebvre travelled to Fort Selkirk where he met Oblate fathers Edmond Gendreau and Alphonse Desmarais, secular priest Corbeil, and Oblate Brother Augustin Dumas, all of whom had travelled in over the Chilkoot Pass. Oblate superior Gendreau went on down to Dawson where he discussed the division of labour with Father Judge. After Judge’s death in 1899, Father Gendreau stopped the work on a proposed Oblate residence at Selkirk and concentrated his priests in Dawson.((Robert Choquette, //The Oblate Assault on Canada’s Northwest.// University of Ottawa Press, 1995: 78.))
	
Lefebvre and Dumas met again in the Yukon in 1898 where they built a church in Whitehorse with the help of other priests and their congregation. The first mass was held in the church at Christmas, 1901.((Yann Herry, //La Francophane: une richesse nordique / Northern Portraits.// L’Association franco-yukonaise, 2004: 19.)) Father Lefebvre established a church on Dominion Creek in 1899. In the spring of 1900, he erected St. John the Baptist church in Fort Selkirk.((F.A. Acland, //The Yukon Territory 1926.// Department of the Interior. Ottawa: Kings Printer, 1926: 83-84.)) 

By 1900, there were no Jesuits and six Oblates working in the territory under the direction of Emile Bunoz. In 1900, Father Lefebvre and Brother Augustin Dumas built the Whitehorse Sacred Heart church with the help of their French-Canadian congregation. The inscription in French at the base of the statue of Notre-Dame-du-Sacre-Coeur honours their contribution. This early church was replaced by the Sacred Heart Cathedral in the 1960s.((”Sacred Heart Cathedral.” 2020 website: https://baladodecouverte.com/circuits/530/poi/7445/sacred-heart-cathedral.)) Father Lefebvre left the Yukon in 1906.((Vincent J. McNally, //The Lord’s Distant Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British Columbia.// University of Alberta, 2000: 317.)) He became the procurator of Mackenzie and provided supplies for the missions.((Yann Herry, //La Francophane: une richesse nordique / Northern Portraits.// L’Association franco-yukonaise, 2004: 19.))