Meanwhile the arrival of the disciples of De Mazenod, founder of the Order of the Oblates, threw a new light on the vocation of Alexandre Taché. Being the great-great-grandson of Joliette, and having been brought up in Boucherville, in the very house whence the celebrated Jacques Marquette had started for his western missions--having moreover been sheltered by the same roof under which Marquette had registered the first baptism administered in the locality[13]--it is no wonder that the spirit of those renowned personages still hovered around the young ecclesiastic, indicating a life of self-denial, to be endured in the far North-West. He entered the novitiate at Longueil, in October, 1844. The mission of the Oblate Fathers, which now extends from the coast of Labrador to the shores of British Columbia, and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea, was then in its infancy in Canada. In 1844 the Hudson's Bay and North-West Territories were detached from the diocese of Quebec, and the Right Reverend Joseph Norbert Provencher, who had been exercising his zeal throughout those vast regions, was appointed Apostolic Vicar. The venerable prelate had toiled, with a very small number of co-labourers, during the twenty-six previous years, in evangelizing the scattered tribes. Bishop Provencher was convinced that to give more extension to his work it was necessary to secure the services of a religious order, and fixed his choice on the Oblates. His proposal was so much the more readily accepted that it was suited to carry into practical effect, to a more than ordinary degree, the motto of the Order--_Pauperes evangelizantur_. This decision awakened a flame in the heart of the novice Taché. His first impulse was to offer his services in the generous undertaking. It was not without dread and apprehension that he harboured the idea, for he was but twenty-one years of age. So far, he had known in life naught but what was congenial to his affectionate nature: the pure joys of home, the tenderness and solicitude of an almost idolized mother. He had grown up in the sunshine of universal affection, and his feelings had never been chilled or nipped by deception or unkindness. The struggle was a difficult one; but, in the designs of Providence, his love for his mother was made the means of determining his resolution. The act of his life which has enlisted the most tender sympathies is certainly that which found him at the shrine of filial piety, offering to the Almighty the sacrifice of home and country, and of all that he held dearest on earth; begging, in return, the recovery of his mother from a dangerous illness under which she was then labouring. Madame Taché was restored to health, and was spared for twenty-six years to witness the elevation and popularity to which her beloved son was destined.