PROULX, JEAN-BAPTISTE (signed works under the pseudonym Joannes Iovhanné), Catholic priest, teacher, editor, school administrator and author, born January 7, 1846, in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Lower Canada, son of Jean-Baptiste Proulx, dit Clément, and Adéline Lauzon; died March 1, 1904, at the Ottawa General Hospital, and was buried on March 5 in Saint-Lin, Quebec. Jean-Baptiste was a descendant of Jean Baptiste Préaux & Marie Catherine Fleury.
After his classical and theological studies at the minor seminary of Sainte-Thérèse (1857-1865), in Lower Canada, and a brief stay in Charlottetown due to illness in 1868, Jean-Baptiste Proulx was ordained to the priesthood in Montreal on July 25, 1869, by Mgr Ignace Bourget. After teaching rhetoric at the minor seminary of Sainte-Thérèse in 1869-1870, he served as a missionary in Manitoba from 1870 to 1874. Returning to Quebec, he was successively chaplain to the Marianite Sisters of Holy Cross in Saint-Laurent, on the island of Montreal (1876-1877), professor of literature (1877-1884) and prefect of studies (1883-1885) at the minor seminary of Sainte-Thérèse, chaplain at Sainte-Darie, the women's prison in Montreal (1884-1886), parish priest at Saint-Raphaël-Archange on Île Bizard (1886-1888), then at Saint-Lin (1888-1904). Appointed vice-rector of Université Laval in Montreal in 1889, with the title of Doctor of Letters, he entrusted his parish to two pastors. After resigning as vice-rector in 1895, he retired to Saint-Lin. He was appointed honorary canon of Montreal Cathedral in 1878 and - although it is not possible to confirm this - secret cameraman to Pope Leo XIII.
In the summer of 1881, Proulx spent 30 days accompanying Bishop Joseph-Thomas Duhamel of Ottawa on his pastoral visit to the Upper Outaouais region, and wrote letters to Vicar General Joseph-Onésime Routhier (brother of Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier) describing the missionaries' daily work, the customs of the Amerindians, his curiosity about nature and his love of anecdotes. In 1884, he repeated the experience, this time accompanying the vicar apostolic of Pontiac, Mgr Narcisse-Zéphirin Lorrain, for 64 days, mostly by canoe, in what is now northern Ontario, from Mattawa to Hudson Bay. Twenty-four letters, addressed to parish priest Dosithée Leduc of Chapeau, tell the story, in the same vein as the first. In 1885, as secretary to Curé François-Xavier-Antoine Labelle, he made his third major trip to Europe (England, Belgium, Italy, France), with the aim of recruiting settlers and introducing the French to Canada. In Paris, he published a brochure outlining the colonization program, entitled Canada, le curé Labelle et la colonisation (1885), followed a few months later by another entitled Guide du colon français au Canada. le Canada, le curé Labelle et la colonisation (1885), puis une autre, quelques mois plus tard, sous le titre le Guide du colon français au Canada.
His work as an educator led Abbé Proulx to exercise his talents as a playwright in four plays of varying inspiration and style. The first - and his first published work -, Édouard le Confesseur, roi d’Angleterre (Montréal, 1880), appeared under the pen name Joannés Iovhanné, which he also used as a columnist for the Annales térésiennes This five-act tragedy exalts the sacred values of the fatherland and faith, presenting the exemplary reign of Saint Edward the Confessor to students of classical colleges. L’Hôte à Valiquet ou le Fricot sinistre (Montreal, 1881) is based on a folk legend recounted by Joseph-Charles Taché in "Forestiers et Voyageurs; études de mœurs", first published in les Soirées canadiennes (Quebec) in 1863, with the aim of inciting young people to temperance. As for the third play, le Mal du Jour de l’an (Montreal, 1882), it presents an unpretentious comedy still intended for students at the Petit Séminaire de Sainte-Thérèse, as its subtitle, Scènes de la vie écolière, indicates. Finally, the fourth, les Pionniers du lac Nominingue (Montreal, 1883), leaves no doubt as to the author's intentions, as the subtitle makes abundantly clear: les Avantages de la colonisation. Religious proselytizing and national fervor also shine through, along with praise for the generous, good countryside as opposed to the unhealthy, corrupting city. Abbé Proulx's apostolic work was both didactic and educational.
Abbé Proulx first demonstrated his literary talents at the minor seminary of Sainte-Thérèse. In 1864-1865, he was elected president of the Académie Saint-Charles, whose "active members," according to chronicler Émile Dubois, "are students from the upper classes who have achieved success in literature"? From 1880 onwards, he composed and performed his plays at the minor seminary, then published them in the Annales térésiennes, to which he occasionally contributed. He became the magazine's editor in 1882, interspersing poems, "cantatas" (at least 7), a three-part "operetta" entitled "Dierum Laetissima", an acrostic, three groups of "monarchist" couplets, sermons and translations of sacred hymns, in addition to his rather irregular "monthly" columns. The 1880s were his years of intense literary production. Towards the end of this period, he published an edifying and moralistic adventure novel, l’Enfant perdu et retrouvé ou Pierre Cholet (Mile-End [Montreal], 1887), and three short stories in la Minerve de Montréal (September 9, 1886, May 7 and September 9, 1887), after writing in installments about his first trip to Rome, beginning on February 21, 1885.
Following the fire of October 5, 1881, which destroyed the seminary from top to bottom, Abbé Proulx became, in the words of Abbé Dubois, the driving force behind the fund-raising campaign to rebuild the building. The minor seminary's chronicler praises the enthusiasm and energy of the "ebullient abbé", who does not hesitate to go door-to-door and preach to raise the necessary funds. Together with the college authorities, he supervised the reconstruction work and carried the cross at the head of the solemn procession on the day of the building's blessing.
Appointed vice-rector of Université Laval in Montreal in 1889, Abbé Proulx devoted almost all his energies to a cause he had been entrusted with: the "university question" [V. Édouard-Charles Fabre; Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau]. This highly controversial issue, which concerned the administrative and financial autonomy of Université Laval in Montreal, got him into a great deal of trouble in both the religious and political worlds. After two trips to Rome (1890 and 1892), frequent negotiations and repeated delays, both in Quebec City and in Rome, on February 11, 1892, he finally received approval from the Holy See for his plan to incorporate the administrators of Laval University in Montreal, a plan that was adopted by Parliament in June. In reply to l’Électeur (Québec), which expressed jubilation at his alleged failure, Abbé Proulx vigorously defended himself from having pleaded the cause of the Montreal branch's independence in Enfin ! ou Cinquième rapport sur sa gestion universitaire [...] (Montreal, 1892). Believing his mission to be complete, he tendered his resignation to the Archbishop of Montreal, Mgr Édouard-Charles Fabre, who refused, ordering him instead to complete the construction of the new university building on rue Saint-Denis. Once this was accomplished, he retired to his rectory in Saint-Lin in 1895.
Confident in his negotiating skills, the diocesan authorities entrusted Abbé Proulx with the delicate mission of meeting with the Bishop of Hartford, Connecticut, regarding the refusal of the parishioners of Danielson (Killingly) to pay for their pews because of the appointment of a Frenchman, the Reverend M.-Clovis-F. Soquet, as parish priest. Relying on a promise from the bishop, they demanded the appointment of a French-Canadian parish priest or the division of the parish with a French-Canadian parish priest at the head. Mgr Michael Tierney refused, as long as the "rebels" did not submit. Abbé Proulx returned empty-handed.
In the fall of 1896, it was again Proulx, along with Gustave-Adolphe Drolet, a former Papal Zouave, who Wilfrid Laurier called upon to defend to the Vatican the merits of the settlement he was negotiating with Thomas Greenway's government on the Manitoba school question. Laurier, who had just been elected Prime Minister of Canada, feared the reaction of Quebec's Catholic bishops, who, when he was Leader of the Opposition, had delayed the passage of the remedial legislation that would have led Manitoba to re-establish the dual system of denominational public education, arguing that the schools question should first be investigated and that all means of conciliation exhausted. Armed with his Documents pour servir à l’intelligence de la question des écoles du Manitoba […], published in Rome in 1896, Proulx denounced the intervention of the clergy in the recent elections [V. Louis-François Laflèche], insisted that the settlement was approved by the general population and asked that an apostolic delegate be sent to assess the situation. Although the Catholic hierarchy in Quebec also sent representatives to thwart the action of Laurier's two delegates, Rome finally agreed to the suggestion of sending an apostolic delegate, in the person of Mgr Rafael Merry del Val.
In his last travel report (Dans la ville éternelle [...] (Montreal, 1897)), worn out by his multiple jobs and missions, Jean-Baptiste Proulx describes himself as follows: "5 feet 6 inches, fat, full, graying, curly hair, poached eyes, long nose, getting old". As his chroniclers, including Abbé Élie-Joseph-Arthur Auclair, point out, this tireless worker, this "priest with a clear mind and a generous heart [...] is one of those whom history cannot, either always or for long, completely ignore. He worked too hard - he used up his life and died relatively young - for what he believed to be the good and the progress of his race, for us to persist in keeping him in an oblivion, which the need for appeasement may at first have explained up to a point, but which, in the long run, would become unjust and even cruel."
Gilles Dorion
Ref. : Gilles Dorion, « PROULX, JEAN-BAPTISTE (1846-1904) », in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, Université Laval/University of Toronto, 2003- , accessed Feb. 13, 2014, - http://www.biographi.ca/fr/bio/proulx_jean_baptiste_1846_1904_13F.html.
P.S. A street in Longueuil bears the name PROULX in memory of this priest.
Source : http://www.toponymie.gouv.qc.ca/ct/ToposWeb/Fiche.aspx?no_seq=288462
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