The first woman missionary in the history of Christianity and the bishop who established the only 17th-century Catholic diocese north of Mexico both still have lessons to teach Canadians today.

“What do we gain by knowing about our grandparents or our great-grandparents?” asked Jesuit historian Fr. Jacques Monet. “What do we gain by knowing where we come from, or who we are because of where we come from? The Church, certainly to this day, has been marked by the coming of Bishop Laval and the founding of the diocese of Quebec.”

If Canadians could come to understand the world of Bishop Laval and Marie de l’Incarnation, they might see the origins of this country differently, said York University history professor Boyd Cothran.

“When they got here they discovered a complex indigenous place where they had to compromise, they had to learn how to live together and they had to create community,” Cothran said. “That’s one of the things that sets New France, and to some extent New Spain, apart from British colonialism.”

Marie de l’Incarnation’s first school was aimed primarily at native girls in a way that is almost the opposite of the disastrous residential schools experiment of the 19th and 20th centuries. On her arrival in 1639 to live in a tiny wooden house between the cliffs and the St. Lawrence River in Quebec’s lower town, Marie promptly began learning four different aboriginal languages. She wrote dictionaries in Algonquin and Iroquois. She wrote a catechism in Iroquois. She wrote a book of sacred history in Algonquin. Rather than suppressing aboriginal culture and language, Marie sought to offer Christ in ways the people could understand.

A generation later, even with instructions from the royal court that he was to impose French language and culture on the native people, Bishop Laval insisted all his seminarians learn Amerindian languages.

This was a world in which “French hegemony was very tenuous,” said Cothran.

English Canadians have tended to forget this history where Quebeckers live with the landmarks that keep it alive. The Grand Seminary of Quebec, which Laval established in 1663, is today Laval University. No tour of Quebec City is complete without the tour guide pointing out where Marie de l’Incarnation and the Ursuline sisters established the first hospital and the first school.

For native Canadians also, the pre-British period is still important.

“For First Nations people, I would say this period still has a lot of resonance,” said Cothran. “Among First Nations people some of these stories and realities of the colonial period are still very much a part of their understanding of what it means to be Canadian today.”

New France was no utopia of perfect European and native co-operation. Throughout his long tenure as bishop of Quebec from 1659 to 1708 Laval battled with governors and Quebec’s merchants over the exploitive sale of alcohol to natives. Laval even returned to France to get one pro-alcohol governor recalled. Laval imagined a Church that was independent and self-sufficient. He established the parish system in Quebec where “fabriques” or parish corporations and their boards hold the ultimate authority — not the parish priest. He established a seminary so that Canada would not have to rely on priests from France.

“The Church was very Canadianized. It was Canadian-born young men who went into the seminary rather than priests coming over from France,” said Monet. If Laval gave the Canadian Church its independence, Marie de l’Incarnation opened up a world of possibility for women in the Church. Born Marie Guyart, she was a young mother and widow at the age of 20. She managed her late husband’s silk business into profitability before selling it and then helping her sister and brother-in-law run another business shipping goods to New France. With a Jesuit spiritual director, Guyart was inspired by the Jesuit Relations — reports of the New World by St. Jean de Brebeuf and other Jesuit missionaries — and after a series of mystical visions joined the Ursulines. Marie didn’t just have visions, she brought them into reality. When she met the wealthy Marie-Madeline de Chauvigny de la Peltrie it confirmed for her a vision which inspired her to answer the call to the New World.

“What Marie did was she put God above everything else. She put her purpose above everything else,” said University of St. Michael’s College student Eman Cheema. “Though it really hurt her to separate from her son, she did it because it was something she was dedicated to — she was committed to that purpose.”

It’s a story that would certainly inspire women today, said Cheema. “There’s a lot of things women don’t do today because it’s still not the norm,” she said. “It would become the norm if we just stopped believing in the already established norms. It’s not something that can’t be changed. And that’s what she did.”

Sr. Theresa Campeau remembers learning about Marie de l’Incarnation as a young novice. The story struck her.

“What a remarkable woman she was,” said Campeau, who is today congregational leader of the Ursuline Sisters of Chatham Union. “The remarkable woman she was and the courage. Her story spoke to me about great courage.”

While Campeau recognizes the spirit of adventure evident in Marie’s life, she insists it’s not self-indulgent adventure seeking.

“Adventure not for herself but adventure for the benefit of people,” she said. “In coming to Canada for the benefit of the people of Canada she was listening to the Spirit, God’s Spirit, wanting to make a difference.” Marie de l’Incarnation isn’t just an inspiration to Ursulines, according to Campeau.

“It could affect any woman in the world. Her story has that kind of impact,” she said.

Marie had advice for women who seek to live in union with Christ.

“When the soul has reached this state, it makes very little difference whether it is buried in business worries or enjoys restful solitude,” she wrote. “It is all the same for the soul, for everything that touches it, everything that surrounds it, everything that strikes its senses does not prevent its enjoyment of love’s presence.”

“What there is now in the (Canadian) Church today is in continuity with what started in the 17th century,” said Monet. “The Church today is the heir of what they began.”