Alexandre-Antonin Taché

Alexandre-Antonin Taché (23 July 1823 – 22 June 1894) was a Roman Catholic priest, missionary of the Oblate order, author and the first Archbishop of Saint Boniface in the Canadian province of Manitoba.

In late 1844 Taché entered the Oblate novitiate. He soon expressed an urge to preach to the native population of the west and was sent to Saint Boniface in the Red River Colony along with Father Pierre Aubert. They went to work with Bishop Joseph-Norbert Provencher.

Provencher ordained Taché a priest on October 12 1845. He studied the basics of the Ojibwe language and was sent to start a mission in Île-à-la-Crosse. Later, he also became proficient in Cree and Athabaskan.

In 1847, Rome created the diocese of the North-West. In June 1850, Taché was named bishop of Arath and Provencher's successor at the age of 27. He only received the news of his appointment in January 1851. He was consecrated a bishop on November 23 1851 in Marseille by Bishop Eugene de Mazenode. Provencher died on June 7 1853, and Taché became the bishop of St. Boniface.

Taché created the diocese on the strict hierarchical model of the Quebec dioceses he was familiar with. Although he had a positive view of the First Nations and Métis members of his diocese, he viewed them from a paternalistic viewpoint, hoping that their non-European and therefore intrinsically inferior culture would be replaced with that of his own European-based society. His attempt was fruitless, as European settlers refused to accept First Nations peoples no matter what attempts were made at assimilation; their skin colour alone was an absolute, unbreachable bar to assimilation. First Nations Catholics who left behind their own culture in the attempt to assimilate therefore not only lost their original culture but were effectively barred from joining the burgeoning Francophone and anglophone cultures. The tensions caused by this resound in Western Canada to this day.

Bishop Taché died in Saint Boniface in 1894. The Rural Municipality of Tache and Tache Avenue in Saint Boniface were named after him.

External links

* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14427c.htm Biography from the "Catholic encyclopedia"]
* [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6453 Biography from the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online"]

s-ttl|title=Archbishop of Saint-Boniface
years=1853–1894