Oblates of Mary Immaculate

Charles Joseph-Eugne de Mazenod founded the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Congregation of the Catholic Church, in France in 1815. In 1841, the first group of Oblates arrived in eastern Canada and by the late 1840s, they had taken their missionary work to western Canada. In an effort to introduce Christianity to the native people, they established missions in northern Saskatchewan and northern Alberta. The Oblates continued to expand the range of their work, pushed further northward, and eventually established missions along the Mackenzie River and on the arctic coast. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a number of Oblate Fathers working in the Mackenzie Delta and arctic coast region, particularly Fathers Metayer and LeMeur, began recording the life stories and legends of local elders and artists. Through the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s, the Oblates became involved in a number of other projects to document the history of the local native population. These projects included gathering genealogical information, traditional place names, and producing native language dictionaries. In the 1970s, Father LeMeur began working with CBC radio in Tuktoyaktuk. He hosted a radio show that featured legends and life stories of local residents. Often the broadcasts included both Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun and English translations of the same story. The radio show provided Father LeMeur with both a venue to broadcast the recordings already collected and a means of continuing the recording work.

Father William A. Leising, whose work was chronicled in the film “Artic Missions of the Mackenzie,” which he narrated, died May 10, 2007, in Medford, Ore. Father Leising was born on March 31, 1913, in East Amherst to George and Mary Leising. He attended St. Mary School in Swormville, St. Jerome in Kitchener, Ontario, and St. Bonaventure College (now University). He also attended Blate College of Philosophy in Newburgh, and Oblate Seminary, Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He was ordained in 1940 in Washington by Cardinal Francis Spellman. From 1940 to 1965, Father Leising served as a missionary pilot, dentist and rescuer near Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. He also served as a chaplain to many mining companies. During this time he learned the Chipewyan Indian Language and served as a dog sled missionary. He spent his summers as a riverboat pilot and engineer, assisting the bishop on mission visitations. In 1965, after three bouts of hepatitis and a ruptured gall bladder, Father Leising moved to the Diocese of Belleville, Ill., where he directed a radio station.