College de Montreal (1929-1935)

The college was directed by the Sulpician Fathers. It was not a "Junior Seminary," still less a "Juniorate," where young boys learned to live the life of a religious. The "College de Montreal" provided a broad liberal education that prepared young men who might later study law, medicine, science or literature. Like so many other colleges in the province of Quebec, it was a most appropriate environment for the formation of mind and character of future priests.

I arrived at college accompanied by my cousin Gerald Lachance, who was five years my elder. We had grown up close by in Fall River. His presence was a comfort to me as I arrived at a boarding school away from home. Gerald was for me not only a dear friend and companion; he soon became my mentor in the spiritual life.

My first year at college went smoothly and happily. My love of studies only became more pronounced. But suddenly, on the 29th day of October 1929, the entire country was taken by surprise by the "Wall Street Crash" that set the New York Stock Market tumbling. Come September 1930, there was no more question of my going back to college. I was the eldest of eleven children and a twelfth one was on the way. So I stayed at home and began to help dad in his grocery store.

Meanwhile, Father Pierre Granger, a former pastor of St. Anne's and a very dear friend of my father, found out that I had not gone back to college. He immediately suspected that money was the problem and he intervened so as to allow me to continue my studies. He noted the fact in his diary in these words: "During my first term as Prior at St. Hyacinthe, I was counseled by Father Ceslas Cote to publish my 'Novena to St. Anne on Piety,' a novena I preached at Fall River in 1918. With the money obtained by this publication I was able to turn in $1,000 to the vocations fund and to help him who today has become the Reverend Father Pierre Lachance, to pursue his classical studies." The hand of God was visibly at work in my life.

My studies were interrupted from September to December 1930. I was then admitted to resume my classes, come January. Father Silvio Gascon, professor of Syntaxe (2nd year of college), volunteered to tutor me to enable me to catch up with my classmates who had just begun studying Greek. I completed my college years and was planning to enter the Dominican Order. But during my last year of college, I experienced a lingering fatigue and my parents decided it was best for me to take a year off to rest and restore my health before entering the novitiate.

Much later, mother confessed that an ulterior motive led my parents to delay my entrance at the novitiate. After spending six years as a boarder at a college in a sheltered environment, it seemed important that I be exposed to life outside with my family, before entering the cloister. This detail revealed to me the wisdom of my parents. I was then able to join the Dominican family and make a more enlightened choice.

Inspired by the same concern, the Dominicans of the Canadian Province always refused to have a juniorate as a means of recruiting vocations while they were still young teenagers. That meant withdrawing adolescents from their natural milieu, the family, and confine them to a closed environment, a boarding school. Our Fathers had an aversion to a "hot house" formation, that does not foster human growth and maturity.