The historians have traced the origins of these institutions to New
England, to England, to Germany, to Greece. It is not remembered that
France went first and hallowed the fields. But it is my hope that out in
that valley, once a year, school and university may be led to look back to
the men who there ventured all for the "greater glory of God" and majesty
of France and found a field for the greater freedom and fraternity of
mankind.
My own thought goes back to the place by the St. Charles River where
Cartier's boat, which he could not take back to St. Malo because so many
of his men had died, was left to be buried by the river, the place where
Montcalm gathered his shattered army after the defeat on the Plains of
Abraham. It was there that a structure once stood, made of planks hewn out
of the forest, plastered with mud and thatched with long grass from the
meadows. It was the residence of Notre Dame des Anges, the house from
which the first martyrs were to go forth toward the west. This was, says
Parkman, the cradle of the great mission of New France.
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