God's Explorers

A Television Documentary by Susan Cardinal

I’ve been fascinated by the North ever since my first trip up to the Mackenzie Valley in 1987. Every few years, another story seems to be draw me back. In 1997, I traveled from Baffin Island in the eastern Arctic to Inuvik in the western Arctic and south through the land of Dene to produce a three-hour CBC radio special on the division of the Northwest Territories and the creation of Nunavut. Everywhere I turned – mission churches were part of the landscape.

During this trip, I ended up spending an afternoon with two Oblate missionaries in Yellowknife. When I asked one of them about the residential school system in the north – he started crying. Silently. Tear drops rolled off his cheek as he talked about how the missionaries sacrificed themselves to help the native peoples, building schools and farms. And how today some people no longer trusted the missionaries. The raw emotion of the moment caught me, and I started to wonder how one comes to terms with a life of sacrifice for something you believed in – only to end up questioning your very reason for being. Clearly, the residential school era had deeply wounded the native peoples but it also had a tell tale effect on the missionaries. I wanted to find out what happened and to understand the history of one of Canada’s most influential missionary groups – the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

The North with its living memories, gritty characters and vast untouched frontiers became a compelling backdrop in which to explore the historic journey of these two cultures the Oblates and the Dene. Over the next few years, I would start to see how the Oblates changed the Dene, but to be sure, how the Dene changed them.

Susan Cardinal, Autumn 2001                               top    home

"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