Constantine Scollen

Father Con Scollen OMI. (4 April 1841 – 8 November 1902) was an Irish Catholic, Missionary priest who lived among and evangelized the Blackfoot, Cree and Métis peoples on the Canadian Prairies and in northern Montana in the United States. He also ministered to the Ktunaxa people (Kootenay) on their annual visits to Fort Macleod, from British Columbia. Later he worked among the indigenous peoples in modern-day North Dakota and Wyoming, then Nebraska, Kansas, Illinois and Ohio.

Early life

Constantine Michael Scollen was born on Galloon Island, Upper Lough Erne, near the village of Newtonbutler, County Fermanagh, Ireland on 4 April 1841. His parents were Patrick Scollen and Margaret Scollen, (née McDermott). His mother died in 1847 during the Great Famine and his father moved to England and worked as a warehouseman in Manningham, Bradford silk mill, West Yorkshire. He then married his cousin, Catherine McEvoy, in 1851, and later moved his family to Crook, County Durham, England where he found work as a coal-miner. Scollen received a classical education at Ushaw College (''St. Cuthbert's College, Ushaw Moor, a Catholic seminary from 1808 until 2011'') on the outskirts of the city of Durham and just a few miles from Crook. His tutor, Father Brook, hoped that Scollen would continue his studies, in Rome, (possibly English College, Rome). His much older cousin, Msg. Thomas Louis Connolly, a Franciscan Capuchin, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, had become Archbishop of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1854. Two of his friends, Bro. Matthews and Bro. Lawrence Tivenan had already joined the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, so he decided to join them and to become a lay brother in the hope of studying for the priesthood, later. On 14 August 1858, he entered their novitiate," Lys Marie", in nearby North Yorkshire in the village of Sicklinghall, close to Wetherby near Leeds. He professed his provisional vows on 15 August 1859 and went to the Oblate retreat house, "Glenmary" in Inchicore village, south of Dublin and " took the habit" and taught there until March 1862. He had volunteered to join the missions in Canada when Mgr Alexandre-Antonin Tache visited Ireland in late 1861, on his way to Rome.(''Oblates were never posted abroad.They had to be volunteers''). On 25 March 1862, back in Sicklinghall, he made his temporary vows as an Oblate brother under Father Boisrame.

In Canada

In April 1862 he and another Irish scholastic, Brother John Duffy, traveled, on an Allan Line Royal Mail Steamers ship, the SS Norwegian, with Mgr. Tache, on his return to Canada following his visit to a General Chapter in Rome, along with newly ordained Father Emile Petitot. They arrived in Fort Garry (Winnipeg) on 26 May 1862. Father Albert Lacombe then took Scollen across the prairies to St. Albert, Alberta. For parts of these journeys, they were accompanied by members of the "Overlanders", who were a group of would be gold miners, mainly from Ontario, involved in the Cariboo Gold Rush to British Columbia. He opened an English language school for children of the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, at nearby Fort Edmonton. He then immediately began studying the Cree language, the first of his later to be six first nations tongues, along with French which was the language of the other oblates.

In 1867 there was a famine in the district so it became necessary to disperse the families to other posts in other areas. This greatly reduced the number of pupils so the school closed in 1868. He had taken his perpetual vows as a scholastic on 15 August 1865 on the understanding that he would be allowed to study for the priesthood. After some delays and interruptions caused by long periods out on the prairies living with the native peoples, he was able to continue his philosophy and theology studies under Father Vital Fourmond and was ordained on Easter Saturday 12 April 1873 by Bishop Grandin. He immediately left St Albert to begin his mission to the Blackfoot, on the Prairies. He was accompanied by fellow Oblate priest Fr Vital Fourmond as his superior. The group included Louis Daze, a French Canadian whose brother was an Oblate priest in Ottawa, who acted as a lay brother.(Daze died in a blizzard a year later while attempting to recover straying horses.) The group also included two others, Alexis Cardinal, a Metis and Jean-Baptiste L'heureux, a French Canadian, who acted as hunters, guides, catechists and interpreters (Scollen had begun studying Blackfoot in 1868 and was already fluent in both Cree and Chippewa) For the next eight years he remained mainly with the Blackfoot (Siksika Nation) and Kainai Blood people on the plains of Southern Alberta

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