It can but be said that the concession of the Great Company was liberal
and well meaning. Indeed the same day of the concession, December 17,
1640, it engaged itself to transport on its own vessels at its own
expense, thirty men chosen by the Messieurs de Montréal as well as
thirty tons of provisions destined for their sustenance; also to write
to M. de Montmagny to give them two sites, one at the port of Quebec
and the other at Three Rivers, where they might house their provisions
in safety.
Great preparations were now the order of the day. Exhaustive plans
were prepared for the gradual development of the Colony of Montreal,
year by year ahead. Rarely has any settlement ever been thought out
so completely. It had the experience of the Colony of Quebec to fall
back upon. Quebec had its three organized institutions, its clergy
residence, its hospital and its school for the young savages. Ville
Marie should have its similar ones. In the place of the Jesuits it
should have a community of resident secular priests. This was not to
oust the Jesuits, who consented to this from the beginning, as they
wished to follow their vocation to evangelize the country far and
wide, the constitution of their order not designing them to be parish
priests. In the meantime they undertook to look after the spiritual
needs of the young settlement from their headquarters at Quebec. The
plan for the personnel to take charge of the other institutions had not
yet matured.
Documents, in the archives of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, at Paris,
relating to this period, show the fervour of those now planning "by the
goodness of God to see in a short time a new church arise which shall
imitate the purity and the charity of the primitive church."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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