Excerpt from To the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend John Talsh, D. D: The Archdiocese of Toronto, 1842-1892, and Archbishop Walsh

The purpose of the volume is to record and preserve the trials, sacrifices and labors of the bishops, priests and people who have gone before us, and who planted the mustard seed of our holy faith in this province, who watered it with tears until it has grown up into a great tree Overshadowing the whole land. It is not pretended that this is a complete history of the subject. It is rather an earnest attempt to gather up fragments of traditions and family history which every year were becoming more scattered, but which must have an abiding interest for the younger generation. It is the erection of a memorial tablet over the first fifty years of our existence as a diocese. We cannot claim the veneration due to antiquity, or proudly point to a long line of saintly prelates, and institutions dating to the dawn of civilization for we are of yesterday compared with many of the dioceses of the Church. Armagh celebrated its thousandth anniversary about the time that Columbus discovered America; Cologne is older still, and(14) Introduction.

Marseilles completed its Golden Jubilee before. The christian dispensation had closed its first century. But there are in our midst treasures of faithful memories, revered names, and well established homes of charity and halls of learning worthy of a place in the imperishable annals of history. The heroic footsteps of the missionaries who first trod this country are retraced in Simple narrative and their tragic sufferings are told as a reminder that our soil is watered with the blood of martyrs. A second chapter upon the early English occupation of the country forms a link between the Huron missions and the episcopate of Bishop Macdonell, the latter part of whose career is within the memory of living men. These two chapters may be regarded as pre-historic; for, strictly speaking, the scope of the work lies within the fifty years which closed last May. What was the state of this country in those times? People found themselves in the face of savage nature, and had to engage in a deadly struggleto compel it to yield even a bare subsistence. These poor settlers, habitually deprived of the consola tions of religion, of its holy word and holier bread of life, its saving truths, its sanctifying prayer and heavenly sacrifice, gradually grew careless and. It is not surprising that on reviewing the past we have reason to mourn the loss of many a family whose fathers came to this country rich in faith and the love of their ancestral Church.

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