New France The Sulpicians played a major role in the founding of the Canadian city of
Montreal, where they engaged in missionary activities, trained priests and constructed the
Saint-Sulpice Seminary. The
Société Notre-Dame de Montréal, of which Jean-Jacques Olier was an active founder, was granted the land of
Montreal from the
Company of One Hundred Associates, which owned New France, with the aim of converting the indigenous population and providing schools and hospitals for both them and the colonists. The Jesuits served as missionaries for the small colony until 1657 when Olier sent four priests from the Saint-Sulpice seminary in Paris to form the first parish. In 1663, France decided to substitute direct royal administration over
New France for that hitherto exercised by the Company of One Hundred Associates, and in the same year the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal ceded its possessions to the Seminaire de Saint-Sulpice. Just as in Paris, the Montreal Sulpicians had important civil responsibilities. Most notably, they acted as seigneurs for the island of Montreal. The Sulpicians served as missionaries, judges, explorers, schoolteachers, social workers, supervisors of convents, almsmen, canal builders, urban planners, colonization agents, and entrepreneurs. Despite their large role in society and their influence in shaping early Montreal, each night they would all return to the Saint-Sulpice Seminary. The administration of the Séminaire de Montreal was modeled on that of the Séminaire de Paris, in which the company was run by the superior, the four-man Consulting Council, and the Assembly of Twelve Assistants. According to the rules of the seminary in 1764, the superior, during his five-year renewable term, was to act like a father and was to be respected. The seminary kept careful records of all employees including birthday, place of birth, marital status, and salary. Female employees posed a particular problem since although a cheap source of labour, their presence in a male religious community was problematic. The superior of the Séminaire de Montréal was inherently also the Island of Montreal's seigneur. In the case of M. Vachon de Belmont, who was responsible for the mission of La Montagne, sixth superior of the Montreal Sulpicians, the master designer of the fort and Sulpicians' residential château, and who was independently wealthy, was very well educated and had trained as draughtsman and architect, M. Belmont had a more than passing interest in military strategy and architecture. M. Belmont's military strategy stamp is also evident in the implementation of the Sault-au-Récollet's
:fr:Fort Lorette and the seigneurie Lac-de-Deux-Montagnes' fort.
François Dollier de Casson and Brehan de Gallinée explored the region of the Great Lakes (1669), of which they made a map. In 1676 the mission of La Montagne was opened on the site of the present Séminaire de Montréal, where
M. Belmont built a
fort (1685). Alcohol traffic, major loss of mission housing by fire in 1694, and other factors necessitated the move of the first mission to one on the edge of the rivière des Prairies, near the Sault-au-Récollet rapids, in north end Montreal island. In 1717, the Compagnie de Saint-Sulpice de Paris was granted a concession (~10.5 miles of frontage, ~9 miles deep) named seigneurie du Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes. In 1721, the Sulpicians moved the Sault-au-Récollet mission to two villages on seigneurie Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes territory; a first village to the west, which was their former hunting grounds and came to be called
Kanesatake, was assigned to the Mohawks, and, later, a village to the east was assigned to the Algonquins and the Nipissings.
After the Conquest On April 29, 1764, the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice de Paris executed an act of donation giving all Canadian property to the Séminaire de Montréal making possible the survival of the Sulpicians to become British subjects, loyal to the Crown. In the wake of the
Conquest of 1760, the Séminaire de Montreal thus became independent from the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice de Paris. After lengthy negotiations, in 1840 the British Crown recognized the possessions of the Sulpicians, the status of which had been ambiguous since the Conquest, while also providing for the gradual termination of the seigneurial regime. This enabled the Sulpicians to keep their holdings and continue their work, while allowing landowners who so desired to make a single final payment (
commutation) and be relieved of all future seigneurial dues. Inauguration in 1825 of the
Lachine Canal opened up markets to the United States' interior via the
Erie Canal (opened in 1822), which in turn provided the impetus for the rapid sudden development of North America's largest industrial park in the area known as
Pointe-Saint-Charles, named after
Charles le Moyne. A large part of Pointe-Saint-Charles was occupied by the Sulpicians' Saint-Gabriel Farm established in 1659 and named after the first superior,
Gabriel de Queylus. At the request of Bishop
Ignace Bourget, in 1840 the Sulpicians took over the diocesan school of theology, creating the famous
Grand Séminaire de Montréal. Since 1857 it has been located on Sherbrooke Street near Atwater Avenue. This operation enabled the Montreal Sulpicians to expand their primary work, the education of priests. They have trained innumerable priests and bishops, Canadian and American, down to the . Canadian Sulpicians may be found operating in seminaries in Montreal and
Edmonton. In 1972 the Canadian Province established a Provincial Delegation for
Latin America, based in
Bogotá, Colombia. In Latin America, the Society functions in Brazil (
Brasília and
Londrina) and Colombia (
Cali,
Cúcuta and
Manizales). They have also served in
Fukuoka, Japan since 1933. == In the United States ==