Georges-Antoine Belcourt (April 22, 1803 – May 31, 1874), also George Antoine Bellecourt, was a French Canadian Roman Catholic diocesan priest and missionary. Born in Baie-du-Febvre, Quebec, Belcourt was ordained in 1827. He established missions in areas of Quebec and Manitoba. On the frontier, he became involved in a political dispute between the local First Nations population and the Hudson's Bay Company, the monopoly fur trading company.
At the urging of the Company's Governor, Belcourt was recalled to Montreal. He was next assigned to Pembina, North Dakota. He established two missions in the 1840s to convert the local Ojibwe (also called Chippewa) and Métis to Catholicism. In 1859, Belcourt left Pembina for Quebec, but was quickly redeployed to North Rustico, Prince Edward Island. He established the Farmers' Bank of Rustico (the first community-based bank in Canada).
Belcourt retired from his post in 1869 to live out his life in New Brunswick, but was recalled in 1871, this time to the Magdalen Islands. In May 1874, Belcourt was forced to retire due to ill health. He died in Shediac, New Brunswick, on May 31, 1874. He was designated a National Historic Person by the Government of Canada in 1959.
Early life
Georges-Antoine Belcourt was born on April 22, 1803, at Baie-du-Febvre, Quebec, to Antoine Belcourt and Josephte Lemire, who had married on February 23, 1802. His parents, devout Roman Catholics, brought their son up in the same faith, and the young Belcourt received his first Holy Communion in 1814. At age 13, Belcourt enrolled in Le Petit Séminaire de Québec to undertake a philosophical course of study, which he completed in 1823. Belcourt studied to become a priest, and on March 10, 1827, Bernard-Claude Panet, the Archbishop of Quebec, performed Belcourt's ordination in the chapel at the Seminary.
Belcourt was appointed as an assistant at several parishes in the area, before becoming pastor of a parish at Sainte-Martine, Quebec, in 1830. As he was bilingual and spoke English as well as French, he was able to minister to his parish of mostly Irish Catholic Canadians.
Early missionary work
During his time at Sainte-Martine, the young priest aspired to do missionary work in the west of British North America and applied for it. In 1830, Archbishop Panet requested that the young priest accompany him on a journey to Manitoba. Following an interview in February 1831, Belcourt was enlisted to go on the trip. After spending two months learning the Algonquian language, Belcourt departed from his home town on April 27 of that year in a canoe of the Hudson's Bay Company. On June 17, the priest's party arrived at Saint Boniface, Manitoba, and Belcourt was assigned as one of three priests there. He was to assist the Bishop at the town's cathedral, and study the Anishinaabe language. He was to work with the Ojibwe people to convert them to Christianity. Although the language was not yet documented in written form, Belcourt made rapid progress. Within a year, he had learned enough to be considered ready to work directly with those whom he termed the "savages," as was customary at the time.
In 1832, Belcourt established the first native-only mission west of Saint Boniface, but Gros Ventre raids forced its closure the following year. In 1834, he established a mission at Baie-Saint-Paul on the Assiniboine River, where he instructed the local Aboriginal population in European-style agriculture. The priest had a log chapel built, with smaller log cabins on the surrounding land to house the natives. The local bishop opposed his missionary work, as he believed the Aboriginal Canadians would not settle in one spot for long. Belcourt overcame this opposition, and in 1834 built a school at his mission, enlisting the assistance of a Chippewa-speaking woman to serve as a teacher. In 1836, the missionary admitted five natives to Holy Communion. He was discouraged by the Ojibwe readiness to return to their former spiritual practices after baptism.
In 1838, Belcourt travelled to Rainy Lake to examine sites for a mission. He abandoned the plan after discovering that the First Nations people were unwilling to give up their Hudson's Bay Company-supplied liquor, as he required for conversion to Christianity. In August 1838, the priest arranged to have a dictionary published in the Chippewa language, and returned to his mission at Baie-Saint-Paul. In the winter of 1839, Belcourt carved 280 oak balusters and candlesticks for his log chapel.