♔ ST. JOSEPH & THE CARIBOU - 1917 CANADA ♔

In March, 1917, famine literally threatened St. Joseph Orphanage at Fort Resolution, northern Canada. The fishing and hunting had been insufficient. One hundred orphans, ten nuns and as many Oblates were experiencing the pangs of hunger. One evening, Father Alphonse Duport, superior of the residence, called all the children together and spoke to them seriously: “As you can see, we are in a miserable state… soon we will be out of food. It seems to me that you haven’t prayed to Saint Joseph fervently enough. Well! Get on your knees, on this very day we’re beginning a novena of prayers.”

Sister Superior, when approached with the question of how many caribous it would take to survive until spring, replied that it would take one hundred. She added, tearfully, that in two days the present supply would be exhausted.. Then Father Duport summoned two hunters. “Go in that direction on the open lake. We need one hundred caribous.” “But Father, you know very well that there is nothing left in that direction. No tracks have been seen.” “Go, I say, kill us one hundred caribous, and not one less! Saint Joseph owes them to us because we are asking him. He’ll send them to us.”

The two men left, certain that it was a lost cause. After two days of walking, they spotted a herd of caribous emerging around a bend in the lake. At first the hunters were surprised to find such a profusion at this spot, but they didn’t lose an instant. Each went for his gun and ammunition bag. They began to shoot. With each bullet they fired one and sometimes two animals fell. Once the herd had dispersed, the dead caribous were counted. There were one hundred and three! It was at the same moment that the sisters and their orphans were in the chapel praying to Saint Joseph for one hundred caribous… and not one less.

ST. JOSEPH: GENEROUS BENEFACTOR

In his memoirs, “Fifty Years in the Land of Snow”, Bishop Breynat acknowledges honestly: “If the missions in Mackenzie have prospered, it is due to the Holy Patriarch St. Joseph who provided for all our needs. We were able to build four boarding schools, six hospitals, ten churches, and twenty new missions. We were able to purchase a half-dozen boats and an airplane to provide for, and visit, these missions. Many times, Saint Joseph amazingly came to our aid when the food supplies were lacking. But it is our school at Fort Resolution, founded under his patronage, which received the most striking evidence of this fatherly concern.”