Edmond Gendreau (1840 – 1918)
	
Edmond Gendreau was born in Saint-Pie, Lower Canada to parents Pierre and Adelaide Normandin Gendreau. He completed classical and theological studies at the Séminaire de Saint-Hyacinthe and was ordained in 1862 as a priest at the young age of twenty-two. He served as a priest in several communities in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada. In 1873, he was appointed as a special agent to repatriate 300 French Canadian families living in the United States. In 1874, he was in charge of rehabilitating the building at the Séminaire de Saint-Hyacinthe. In 1880, he entered the noviciate of the Oblate fathers and took his vows in 1881. He was a bursar at the Lachine noviciate and then procurator at the University of Ottawa from 1882 to 1891 where he oversaw some large-scale building projects. In 1884, the Societe de Colonisation du Temiscamingue was founded in the diocese of Ottawa with Gendreau as its president. In 1887, he was named the president of the Lake Temiscamingue Railway Company with a goal to improve communication and travel in the area. He became the Oblate’s provincial bursar from 1891 to 1893 and lived in Montreal. From 1893 to 1898, he was in Mattawa, Ontario as superior and curé. Gendreau then spent a short amount of time in Hull before he was sent to the Yukon as vicar general and superior of the Yukon missions.((“Edmond Gendreau.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2019 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gendreau_edmond_14E.html))
	
Oblate fathers Edmond Gendreau and Alphonse Desmarais, secular priest Corbeil, and Oblate brother Augustin Dumas, left Vancouver in May 1898 to travel over the Chilkoot Pass to Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River. They met Father Camile Lefebve there. Lefebvre had travelled overland from Fort McPherson. They planned to build a chapel at Fort Selkirk. Father Gendreau continued down the Yukon River to discuss a division of labour with Father Judge in Dawson. Father Judge died a year later, ending the work of the Jesuits in the Yukon.((Robert Choquette, //The Oblate Assault on Canada’s Northwest.// University of Ottawa Press, 1995: 78.))

Father Gendreau stopped work on the Fort Selkirk church/residence and gathered his fellow Oblates at Dawson.((Robert Choquette, //The Oblate Assault on Canada’s Northwest.// University of Ottawa Press, 1995: 78.)) Fr Desmarais, Fr Lefebvre, and Br Dumas, only had a few Catholic soldiers to minister to at Fort Selkirk, so to minimise costs, Gendreau closed Fort Selkirk for the winter but intended to send the fathers back in the spring of 1900.((Translation from French by Anne Collette, 2004. 'Missions OMI' is a newsletter that was published by the Fathers of Mary Immaculate to keep the Oblate Fathers in touch with the missionary work of the order. From correspondence with Bruce Barrett, Yukon Historic Sites, 11 May 2004.)) 

Father Gendreau spent five years in Dawson before ill health and problems with his eyesight forced him to leave. From 1902, he had ministries in Kenora, Winnipeg, and St. Charles, Manitoba before he retired. He died in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec.((“Edmond Gendreau.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2019 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gendreau_edmond_14E.html))