Guigues: The bishop who started a university
Guigues wanted to educate and bring people together
One hundred and seventy-three years after Bishop Joseph-Bruno Guigues stepped onto Canadian soil, his imprint can still be felt in the capital. Two of the qualities that distinguish the University of Ottawa from other institutions — its bilingualism and its key central location — are his legacy.
Guigues was a humble man who lived simply, but he was considered a visionary by many. One of his greatest feats locally was to start the College of Bytown, which, over the years, would grow and eventually split into the U of O and St. Paul’s University.
“He seems like a very elite man, and a rich man, in his official painting,” says Michel Prévost, the University of Ottawa’s chief archivist, “but in fact he was a very simple man, and each year he travelled all around his diocese.”
That diocese, over which he presided for more than 25 years, included the current Ottawa- Gatineau region and extended almost to Rigaud, near Montreal. Guigues would doggedly travel rivers and poorly maintained roads to hear confession and visit the poorest and loneliest among his flock.
Guigues was born in 1805 in La Garde, a small town near Gap in southeastern France, and became a novice of the Oblates at age 17. He was ordained at 23, moved to Canada in 1844, and was considered the acting superior until becoming the first bishop of Bytown in 1847. A year later, he started the College of Bytown.
He maintained a close relationship with the Oblates in France, including the man who had ordained him, Charles-Fortuné de Mazenod, the bishop of Marseilles (canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1995), after whom the chapel at Ottawa’s Saint Paul University is named.
Thomas Moloney, vice-chancellor of the Archdiocese of Ottawa, describes Guigues as a very diligent man, dedicated to his work. Some would call him a workaholic, in today’s terms. He focused on the growth and strength of the diocese, and in the stacks of letters he wrote throughout his lifetime to friends and colleagues, rarely spoke of anything other than his task.
Bytown in the mid-19th century had a poor reputation. It was populated primarily by lumberjacks, and it was dirty. There was prostitution, tension between French Canadians and the Irish, and not much money among the congregation. Guigues wanted to both educate people and bring them together.
It was not, says Prévost, easy to found a college under such conditions. Yet the College of Bytown was “perfectly bilingual, with French courses in the morning, and English classes in the afternoon. That was the vision of Monseigneur Guigues.”
Education was for the elite in 1848, but Guigues believed that if the bourgeoisie could learn each other’s language and culture by studying in the same place, some acceptance and peace would trickle into the rest of the population. He himself took English classes on his arrival in Canada.
Guigues also occasionally worked with Élisabeth Bruyère, an intrepid nun and the first superior of the Sisters of Charity of Ottawa, and when he could, financially supported her hospitals and schools. Guigues was recognized for his accessibility to all.
Prévost, who has been the chief archivist at the University of Ottawa for more than 25 years, works in a basement office filled to the windows with papers and artifacts, at a desk that once belonged to the first secretary of the university. He says there’s a possibility his own family’s presence in the area is thanks to the outreach efforts of Guigues, who started a settlement society while he was bishop, aiming to draw residents to his diocese.
Guigues also made sound financial decisions about expansion, says Prévost. When funds were tight, he temporarily halted construction of the Notre-Dame Cathedral on Sussex Drive, and moved the College of Bytown further from the city core — it was then in what is now Lowertown — to support the growing school.
Prévost believes Guigues’ decision to pause construction on the cathedral demonstrated his priorities as a sensible leader. Although the main structure of the building was complete, and Guigues was appointed its first bishop, the entire building was not finished until long after his death.
“He had bigger dreams for the school,” Prévost says. “He believed it would expand.”
After occupying two different locations in Lowertown in the span of a few years (the first was right beside the cathedral), the college moved to its eventual permanent location. That site was donated by Louis-Théodore Besserer, whom Prévost calls “the father of Sandy Hill.”
“In 1855-56, the population of Ottawa was around 11,000, but most of the people were living down in Lowertown and there was no space for expansion,” Prévost says.
Besserer owned the land from Rideau Street to Laurier Avenue, and from Waller Street to the Rideau River. “He wanted to sell his ground, but nobody was buying, so gave some land to the religious community for the establishment of the college,” Prévost says.
The artifacts in the University of Ottawa archives today include everything from Gee- Gees hockey pucks to footballs, newspapers to building blueprints, and mascot costumes to stained-glass windows from torn-down buildings. Prévost even has the heavy, 169-year-old original keys to the first College of Bytown building, which he considers to be the archives’ most precious artifact.
Today the University of Ottawa is the largest bilingual university in the world, with more than 40,000 students and 450 programs.
“Guigues was a very wise man,” Prévost says. “There were a lot of difficulties over all these years ... people were very poor. I can’t even imagine all the difficulties. But he had a vision for the diocese and the college.”
To mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation, we’d like to introduce you to some of the people who have shaped and built the National Capital. Today: Bishop Joseph-Bruno Guigues.