God's Explorers

A Television Documentary by Susan Cardinal

The Agony

By the 1990s, the Oblates faced an avalanche of emotion over the legacy of the residential schools. It now threatens to envelop them. Revelations of abuse ranging from physical and sexual abuse to cultural and spiritual abuse have surfaced, followed by hundreds of court cases. As they struggle to reconcile the past with the present and future, many older missionaries are left questioning their life’s work in the North.

Bishop Denis Croteau describes the agony of his priests. 

"The mission schools where they have worked and given the best of themselves and worked like slaves… Cutting 400-500 cords of wood every winter so there would be heat. Fishing 15,000 fish so the kids would have something to eat. And they say ‘I’ve done that for 40 years and look today what they say about residential schools. My life has been wasted’. So they look at it from a human point of view, it’s absolutely discouraging. And they feel that they have been betrayed, that their life has not been worth anything, that it’s even been destructive. So they have to transfer it to the spiritual level, where God sees what they have done, what they have accomplished, their intentions. And at the final analysis, He is the judge of what they have done."                        

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God's Explorers premiered on 

History Television Canada 

Wednesday, January 2, 2002

9PM ET/PT 

"The Church was loved by the people. The Church was powerful. But we hit the Titanic with modern society."    

Bishop Denis Croteau, omi

Bishop of the Mackenzie Valley in "God's Explorers"

omi - Oblates of Mary Immaculate

God's Explorers' funding agencies and broadcasters