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Joseph-Camille Lefebvre
Joseph-Camille Lefebvre was born in Quebec.1) 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.2) He was an Oblate priest who had a difficult time working in the Mackenzie River delta region before the Klondike gold rush. He was unable to stop the whalers from introducing alcohol and contagious diseases into the area.3) Lefebvre later expressed the opinion that it was impossible to convert the Inuvialuit.4)
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.5) 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.6)
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, 1901.7) 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.8)
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.9) Father Lefebvre left the Yukon in 1906.10) He became the procurator of Mackenzie and provided supplies for the missions.11)