Jean de Brébeuf

DE BRÉBEUF, Jean, SJ. b. Condé-sur-Vire in Lower Normandy, France, 25 March 1593; d. Saint-Ignace, Canada, 16 March 1649. Born into a family that may have been related to the English Earls of Arundel, Brébeuf entered the Jesuit novitiate at Rouen at age 24, where he taught at the Collège de Rouen and was ordained priest in 1622 at Pontoise. A linguist, he was chosen to go to the missions in New France; he sailed from Dieppe in April 1625. After spending a winter with the Montagnais of the Alqonkin nation near Quebec, he set off in July 1626 taking the fur traders’ canoe route along the St. Lawrence River to the Ottawa River, across Lake Nipissing and along the French River to Georgian Bay...