Most Seventh-day Adventists can give at least a brief and general history of the origins and development of the church in the United States. The story has been told often and well in magazines, Adventist textbooks, and even some scholarly works. But the development of Adventism “north of the border” has been little known and not well understood, a story obscured by the more familiar narrative of the church’s early years in New England, New York, and Michigan.

The work of Seventh-day Adventists among French-speaking people was one of the movement’s first attempts to reach a non-English population group. In the 1850s, as Adventists pondered the meaning of the first angel’s commission in Revelation 14:6 to preach the everlasting gospel to all “nations, tribes, language, and people,” a few began to realize that the French population to the north of New England, in what was then known as Canada East, now Québec, also needed to hear the Advent message. The history of the rise of the Seventh-day Adventist work in Québec illustrates how difficult it is to reach a different population group, and that years of hard work under God’s blessing are often necessary to see permanent results.

Brothers in the Lord
One of the most significant events in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Québec and among French-speaking populations was the conversion 150 years ago of two young descendants of French Canadian parents, Augustin Bourdeau and his younger brother, Daniel.[1] Their pioneering work among French-speaking populations in Québec, Europe, and the American Midwest helped establish a Seventh-day Adventist presence not only in Québec but also in many parts of the world.

The Bourdeau brothers were raised in northern Vermont and belonged to a French Baptist Church in Enosburg. For part of their early life they attended the French Baptist school at the “Mission de la Grande Ligne” (Grande Ligne Mission) in Canada East.[2] They first heard of the Seventh-day Adventist message in 1855 when their brother-in-law, W. L. Saxby, shared with them his new-found faith.

Once convinced of the truths of Adventism, both Augustin and Daniel Bourdeau began to spread the three angels’ messages to their relatives and friends and accompanied itinerant Adventist preachers on their preaching tours. Their first interest was, of course, to work among the French Protestant believers of Northern Vermont. For that purpose they prepared two French tracts, one on the biblical Sabbath and the other on the prophecies of Daniel. By the winter of 1858-1859 the Bourdeau brothers were preaching regularly in the border towns of northern Vermont and in Québec where Sabbatarian Adventists could be found in most villages.

Help from a Former Priest
In 1859 and the early 1860s, the Bourdeaus were joined by Michael B. Czechowski, a Polish former Roman Catholic priest who had left the Catholic Church and emigrated to the United States. For a while in the early 1850s he also attended the Grande Ligne Mission and evangelized French Catholics in upstate New York and northern Vermont. After meeting much opposition from the Roman Catholic clergy, however, he went to Ohio. There, in 1857, he had met some Sabbatarian Adventists who convinced him of the truthfulness of their message.

After Czechowski teamed up with the Bourdeau brothers, they were successful in winning over a number of French Baptists in northern Vermont. But Czechowski’s efforts and work with the Bourdeaus received mixed reviews. Having a former Catholic priest spreading the three angels’ messages gave a certain validity to the message, and yet Czechowski was not always the most pleasant person to work with. He was often stubborn, opinionated, and a poor manager of resources. Discontented with Seventh-day Adventist leaders, he finally got an Evangelical Adventist organization to sponsor him as a missionary to Europe where he went in 1864. There, until his death in 1876, he preached and taught many of the Seventh-day Adventist doctrines and, in particular, the Sabbath. Czechowski was also instrumental in establishing the first French-speaking Sabbath-keeping Adventist congregation in Europe, in Tramelan, Switzerland.

In spite of their desire to work among French people, the Bourdeaus concentrated much of their labor on the English work and established many new churches in northern Vermont and Québec. Through the 1860s, their efforts for the French were intermittent, with an occasional visit to the Grande Ligne Mission or to other longtime friends. Lack of financial resources and, more importantly, lack of vision on the part of church leaders also hindered the growth of the Seventh-day Adventist work among the French-speaking population in Québec.

Things began to be more hopeful in 1869, when the Vermont Conference, which was responsible for the Adventist work in the province of Québec, discussed Augustin Bourdeau’s work among the French of northern Vermont and Québec and voted to “pledge our prayers and hearty co-operation in the work of Foreign Missions [i.e. among the French], and that we will aid by our means, as may be necessary, to carry forward this important branch of the great work in which we are engaged.”

Following this action, Augustin Bourdeau endeavored to spend more time working among the French in Québec. Occasional friendly visits at the Grande Ligne Mission produced a few good results. Each time Bourdeau visited the Mission, some of his friends subscribed to the Review and Herald or other Adventist journals, and purchased books. These publications were always the silent means of sowing seeds in the minds of their readers. After years of cultivating these contacts, some people at the Mission, among them the Giguère and Meggison families, decided to keep the Sabbath.

Given the limited financial resources, however, the Vermont Conference could not afford to support two ministers working among the French population. Daniel Bourdeau worked in California from 1868 to 1870, then went to work among French immigrants in Illinois and Wisconsin until about 1873. In Illinois, Daniel succeeded in establishing a congregation in Sainte-Anne-de-Kankakee where a large group of French Canadians had settled in the 1850s. This group had followed former Roman Catholic priest, Charles Chiniquy, who became a Protestant pastor and spoke extensively against the Catholic Church.

Renewed Efforts
However promising and encouraging the resolution adopted by the Vermont Conference in 1869 may have been, the demands of the work among the English-speaking churches of northern Vermont were such that Augustin Bourdeau consecrated very little time to work among the French population. Only in 1875, after he and his son-in-law, R. S. Owen, and daughter, Sarah, started a permanent work in Québec, did his evangelistic efforts for the French population become more consistent. They were successful in establishing a number of English-speaking churches in the Eastern Townships of Québec and organized the Québec Conference in 1880, the first Seventh-day Adventist conference in Canada. It took many more years of work before a French congregation was established. Only in 1890 did Owen succeed in establishing a partly French church in the town of Angers, near Ottawa.

It is intriguing that Augustin Bourdeau’s renewed efforts in Québec in 1875 came just one year after J. N. Andrews went to Switzerland as the first official Seventh-day Adventist missionary. While up to then Québec had been an extension of the Vermont conference, now it was viewed as a mission field and thus in need of evangelistic efforts. After all, how could the church sponsor missionaries to French Europe when the French population on its own continent was not being reached? Augustin and Daniel Bourdeau clearly saw the need of spreading the three angels’ messages in Québec long before church leaders realized it. But it took time for the church to change its outlook on the world.

Somehow, and strangely, it seemed that the only way for the Bourdeaus to really dedicate themselves to work for the French was to leave northern Vermont and Québec. Daniel worked among the French immigrants of Illinois and Wisconsin where he established a few French churches there between 1870 and 1873. He also went to Europe to assist in the establishment of the French Seventh-day Adventist work on that continent in 1876 and again in 1883-1887. Augustin also went to Europe from 1884 to 1888. Upon their return to Canada, both brothers were more successful in establishing the foundations of a solid French work in Québec.

The Energy of Napoleon
During the first three decades of Seventh-day Adventist presence in Québec, very few converts came from the French population, since most of the evangelistic efforts centered among the English-speaking population. But a small breakthrough among the French population occurred after a French-speaking Roman Catholic, Napoléon Paquette, accepted the Seventh-day Adventist message while living in the United States and then decided to return to his home town of Lachute, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) west of Montréal.

In May 1887 Paquette visited his family and friends in Lachute and shared his new beliefs. It did not take long, however, for the Roman Catholic priest to turn everyone, including his parents, against him. After spending some time with R.S. Owen in South Stukely, both Owen and Paquette headed to Lachute, where they pitched their evangelistic tent. While Owen preached in English, Paquette interpreted into French. By mid-summer, one other French Canadian was keeping the Sabbath and a few more showed some interest. Paquette was particularly successful in selling Seventh-day Adventist books about the end-time prophecies of the Bible. As he visited homes, he also left various tracts and leaflets.

The following summer, Paquette visited the Gobeille family in Angers, near Ottawa. This visit left a lasting impression on the Gobeilles and by the beginning of 1889, Virginie Gobeille was also canvassing Adventist publications in her home town. As a result of Paquette and Gobeille’s work, a bilingual French and English Seventh-day Adventist congregation was organized by the fall 1890. Meetings held the weeks before the organization of the church led to the baptism of six persons, including a former Roman Catholic priest.[3]

Establishing a Foothold on Mount Royal
Early in their history, Seventh-day Adventist evangelists avoided working in the large cities of North America, which they believed to be hotbeds of immorality and evil passions. Evangelists instead preferred the more stable rural environment. But since they believed their commission was to preach the gospel to every nation, tribe, and people, they soon realized that the large cities and their teeming industrial populations also needed to receive the gospel. Helping to change the Adventist lack of interest in urban evangelism were Ellen White’s earnest appeals in favor of working in large urban areas.

Among the cities in the province of Québec, Montréal, with its population of about 300,000 in 1901, towered as a large urban center yet untouched by Seventh-day Adventists. R. S. Owen’s colporteur program, instituted in the Québec Conference in the mid-1880s, laid the groundwork for a permanent presence in Montréal. But it took fifteen years before a church would be organized there. By the mid-1890s, colporteurs were very active in Montréal and in June 1894 H. E. Rickard reported that four colporteurs had sold close to a thousand books in the last year in Montréal and Québec City.

In 1897, the General Conference encouraged a major evangelistic effort to establish a visible Adventist presence in Montréal by assigning Daniel Bourdeau to work there and in other areas of Québec where Seventh-day Adventists were not well known, particularly among the French population.

By the beginning of August 1898, Daniel Bourdeau and his team were planning a series of French meetings in Montréal. Even before the meetings started, they caught the interest of the population. As they were distributing handbills and inviting people to attend the meetings, which were going to be held in a big tent in St. Louis Square, a reporter from the French journal La Presse called upon Bourdeau and asked for an interview. The ensuing report appeared on the front page of the newspaper on August 13 and attracted a lot of attention with its headline announcing the upcoming end of the world. “The result was that at our first French meeting the tent was packed,” recalled a delighted Bourdeau. The meetings continued during the fall in a rented hall, and as money was available, more French tracts and leaflets were distributed.

Throughout the following winter months, Bourdeau continued his efforts among the French population in Montréal and surrounding towns and received help from his brother Augustin who joined him in early January 1899. After laboring in Montréal for over a year, the Bourdeaus witnessed the birth of a new congregation on October 1, 1899. That day Augustin baptized ten persons and organized a church of 22 members. This first church in Montréal was predominantly English-speaking and met in various places over the years. It is now the Westmount church.

Up to the Present
For most of the twentieth century, the growth in the French Adventist membership in the province of Québec was slow even though different organizational structures tried to facilitate growth among the English and French populations and only a few French-speaking congregations were organized before 1971. Between 1944 and 1971, the “Mission du Saint Laurent” (St. Lawrence Mission) was responsible for the French congregations in eastern Canada, while English congregations joined with Ontario to form the Ontario-Québec Conference. The St. Lawrence Mission had two major centers, one in Montréal and another in Québec City, and a few European pastors led in the evangelistic work in these cities during this period: André Le Coultre, Henri Drouault, Joseph Bureaud, René Devins, André Rochat, and Erwin Morosoli. In spite of these efforts, the total membership remained very small; there were only 89 French-speaking members in 1962, and 113 in 1970.

In 1971, the English-speaking churches in Québec and the St. Lawrence Mission merged to form the Québec Seventh-day Adventist Church Association with a total membership of 605, distributed in eight churches, of which only two were French-speaking, Montréal and Québec City. By then the secularization of the society facilitated the work of Protestant groups in this Roman Catholic province, and more French-speaking people joined the Seventh-day Adventist church. At the same time, an influx of church members from the Carribean islands also raised the total membership. The membership in the province has steadily increased in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s and now stands at over 4,000 members found in about 43 churches and groups, 26 of which are French-speaking. Since the end of the 1990s, efforts are being made to raise new French-speaking churches in Montréal and elsewhere with the aid of the French “Il Est Écrit” (It Is Written) telecast.

The work among the French population of Québec is a tribute to the pioneers who, with determination and courage, dreamed of a large harvest of souls in their province when Jesus comes again. And greater things are still to come.