Chance visit to historic site leads to rediscovery of cultural milestone (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Chance visit to historic site leads to rediscovery of cultural milestone

BY PAULA SIMONS, EDMONTON JOURNAL FEBRUARY 5, 2012
Canada

Once upon a time, an English professor got lost in the woods, fell
under a spell and found a lost treasure. Really, that's how this story
starts - when the University of Alberta's Patricia Demers got lost
near Lac La Biche, on her way to a picnic.

She turned the wrong way and found herself at a little wooden church
called Notre Dame des Victoires and the Lac La Biche Mission National
Historic Site.

She walked into the interpretive centre, primarily because it was
air-conditioned. Inside, she had an epiphany. She learned that the
first printing press in the territory we now call Alberta had been in
use at the Lac La Biche Mission in 1876, brought from Paris by the
Oblate missionary Emile Grouard. Using the tabletop press, Grouard
wrote and published the first books ever written in the province,
prayer books that combined the Roman Catholic mass and catechism with
Bible stories, hymns and Christmas carols. And he wrote and published
them, not in French or English or Latin, but in five aboriginal
languages he'd learned to speak fluently: Cree, Dene, Beaver, Hareskin
and Loucheux.

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http://www.edmontonjournal.com/life/Story+Alberta+books+starts+here/6104262/story.html