We live in a world with so many magnificent cathedrals, so many ornate buildings that venerate Our Lord, the Virgin Mary and the saints who over two millennia have shaped our faith. The great cities of Europe, in particular, it seems you can’t turn a corner without stumbling upon some architectural masterpiece, honouring St. Peter, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Family and so many more of our blessed saints.

Magnificent they are, yes, drawing the eyes of the world, and millions of pilgrims, each year — 12 million to Notre Dame in Paris, 10 million to St. Peter’s in Rome on average — all celebrating the faith that is the Catholic Church.

Canada, understandably, doesn’t have the history, and in turn the cathedrals, to match these ancient cities. Quebec City’s Notre-Dame de Québec Basilica-Cathedral would likely come closest to these European masterpieces, dating back to the mid-1600s. But the physical building doesn’t have the staying power of the European cathedrals, having been rebuilt multiple times following fires, the current structure dating back to the 1920s. Even here in Toronto, the wonderful St. Michael’s Cathedral Basilica only saw its cornerstone laid in 1845.

Advertisement

But we do have something, so quintessentially Canadian, that does not take a back seat to these marvels. No, Martyrs’ Shrine, in Midland, Ont., does not contain the fantastic artwork of masters like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and so many of the great artists in history. What it does contain, however, is a modest church nestled near the shores of Georgian Bay. The church combines European Catholic traditions with Indigenous influences, the meeting of Canada’s first two solitudes, as a holy and historic space honouring the eight Canadian Martyrs who lost their lives spreading God’s Word to the Indigenous population of a new land, a world away from European civilization.

How truly Canadian. Unassuming, yet so beautiful.

I try to put into words what the Martyrs’ Shrine means to the Canadian Church but I can’t come close to how well the son of Vietnamese migrants to Canada, Vincent Pham, expresses it. Pham, who studies at St. Augustine’s Seminary and in his 25 years has annually joined thousands who make a pilgrimage to the Shrine,  puts it succinctly:

“We hear about all these shrines all throughout the world as great places for an encounter with God. Not to dismiss the importance of these places, but many overlook the Shrine as being right in our backyard here in the Archdiocese of Toronto. We have Rome in a sense. We have holy ground,” he said. “The reality is that Martyrs’ Shrine is a place where the saints once walked and gave their lives for the Church, and every time I’ve gone up since I was a child, it has been the most concrete reminder of that truth.”

Indeed, right on our doorstep, holy ground once tread upon by our own Canadian Martyrs.

It’s a story so many of us know, to some degree, but how much do we really know — about the Shrine, it’s reason for being and the Martyrs themselves?

The Catholic Register aims to tell that story in Missions and Martyrs, our commemorative magazine marking 100 years since Martyrs’ Shrine welcomed the first of countless pilgrims honouring the Martyrs and the Wendat people they ministered to four centuries ago. Over the next two pages, we share an abridged history of the Shrine, a teaser to this collaboration between the Register and Martyrs’ Shrine in retelling, however briefly, the history of the Martyrs and the Indigenous people they encountered in a new land.   

On a personal level, it’s been a pleasure to revisit what was an important piece of my own past. Pilgrimages to the Martyrs’ Shrine were part of my upbringing, from school visits to day trips from my family’s nearby cottage. And it is an even bigger pleasure to provide you, our readers, with so many stories and insights into this holy place where faith meets history. I hope you enjoy, and I hope it sparks in you an interest to purchase Missions & Martyrs — and to visit this gem of the faith, of our Archdiocese, to celebrate this centenary.

Mickey Conlon
Editor
The Catholic Register

Editor’s note: below is an abridged version of the main story by Fannie Dionne in Mission and Martyrs, the new magazine by The Catholic Register commemorating 100 years since the Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ont., opened, and 400 years since St. Jean de Brébeuf began his mission in the Wendat territory.

At the Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ont., one stained-glass window draws the visitor’s eye. The image depicts the Wendat (Huron) Joseph Chiwatenhwa alongside the Jesuit priest Jean de Brébeuf in a 17th-century landscape.

The image lends itself to multiple interpretations. One suggests an exchange of knowledge: the Wendat man is active, sharing what he knows with the missionary, who appears in the posture of a learner, notebook in hand. Another points to evangelization: Brébeuf shares the Good News with Chiwatenhwa, who, in turn, helps translate and adapt the Catholic message for his community, becoming an essential figure in the evangelization of his people.

These two interpretations are not opposed. On the contrary, they reveal two dimensions of the relationship between Jesuit missionaries and Wendat communities in what the French called New France and the Wendat knew as Wendake, one that began in the Great Lakes region 400 years ago this year.

That is what makes 2026 a particularly significant year for the Martyrs’ Shrine. It commemorates both the arrival of Fr. Jean de Brébeuf in Wendake during his first journey to the region in 1626 and the centenary of the Shrine itself. Each anniversary, in its own way, highlights a shared history of encounters between different cultures in a single place.

“Joseph Chiwatenhwa became Catholic and then brought many First Peoples of Canada to the Catholic faith, right down the road from where the Shrine stands,” explains Edwina MacDonald, executive director of the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre and member of the Michipicoten First Nation. “That is what should be celebrated. Because if that had not happened, many of us Indigenous peoples would not be Catholic today. It started there, that is remarkable.”

For Fr. John O’Brien, SJ, director of the Martyrs’ Shrine, this year’s celebrations also “honour our spiritual ancestors, both Jesuit and First Nations.”

Like any history of relationships, this story includes moments of consolation and moments of hardship. Yet the ongoing collaboration between Jesuits and Indigenous Catholics, who today continue to shape the Shrine as a place of encounter, prayer and hope, suggests that the spirit of mutual exchange depicted in the stained glass can still take form in the present.

In the early 17th century, the Wendat Confederacy numbered between 20,000 and 30,000 people living in some 30 communities, organized into several nations and matrilineal clans. Wendake (then known to the French as Huronia) was a major hub of exchange in northeastern North America. The Wendat maintained alliances and trade networks with neighbouring nations, while also facing ongoing conflict with others, including the Haudenosaunee.

It was into this world that missionaries arrived. The first missionaries were the Recollects, who had been travelling from Quebec to the region since 1615. The Jesuits arrived later, in 1626, when Brébeuf and Fr. Anne de Noüe travelled inland alongside the Recollect Joseph de La Roche d’Aillon.

These missions were not isolated religious undertakings. For both Recollects and Jesuits, evangelization was closely tied to the broader French colonial project, often carried out in conjunction with political, economic and diplomatic ambitions.

Still, the Jesuit presence marked the beginning of a relationship shaped by both evangelization and mutual learning. Living within Wendat communities, missionaries sought to share the Christian faith while also learning the language, customs and rhythms of everyday life. This relationship took another dimension with the foundation of the mission of Ste. Marie Among the Hurons in 1639, a fortified settlement that brought together Wendat and European ways of living.

Some Wendat like Chiwatenhwa played a central role in these exchanges between cultures. They acted as interpreters, teachers and cultural mediators, helping to translate and adapt the Catholic message.

Advertisement

Chiwatenhwa was among the first Wendat to request baptism, soon followed by his wife, Marie Aenetta, and other members of his family. At Ste. Marie, in 1640, he also became the first Indigenous man to make the Spiritual Exercises with Brébeuf, his friend and mentor. O’Brien explains.

“Afterwards, he became the first lay missionary, going to his own people. The Jesuits watched in amazement as this ‘man on fire,’ as they called him, expressed Christian teachings in creative ways that spoke to the minds and hearts of the Wendat. Thanks to him, the Wendat became among the first Catholic First Nations in Canada, an early Indigenous Church.”

Yet this relationship unfolded within a context of deep tension. Epidemics, including smallpox, devastated Wendat communities, and in 1638 the Jesuits were accused of causing these illnesses through sorcery. At the same time, conflicts with the Haudenosaunee intensified.

It was in this climate that those later known as the Canadian Martyrs met their deaths. In 1642, the donné (lay volunteer) René Goupil was the first to be killed, near the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) village of Ossernenon, in present-day Auriesville, New York. Fr. Isaac Jogues, who had survived captivity among the Kanien’kehá:ka and returned to the mission, was killed at the same location in 1646, along with the donné Jean de Lalande. In 1648 and 1649, five more met their deaths, this time in Wendake: Fr. Antoine Daniel was killed during a Haudenosaunee raid in 1648, while Brébeuf and Fr. Gabriel Lalemant died in 1649 following ritualized violence. That same year, Fr. Charles Garnier died during a raid on the village of Saint-Jean, and Noël Chabanel was murdered while fleeing the attacks.

Some Wendat Catholics also lost their lives because of their faith. Among them was, likely, Chiwatenhwa himself, who died in 1640.

The Martyrs’ Shrine is closely linked to the deaths of Brébeuf and Lalemant, who were killed at Saint-Ignace II, in present-day Tay Township, where a Cross now marks the site.

The bodies of Brébeuf and Lalemant were first buried at Ste. Marie, before being exhumed and reduced to bones and taken to Quebec where they were already venerated as relics. Stories of their deaths spread widely, and miracles were soon attributed to their remains.

“There is a saying: ‘The blood of the martyrs became the seed of the Church,’ ” says MacDonald. “The Jesuits taught Joseph Chiwatenhwa, and along the way St. Kateri’s mother likely entered the Church through one of those Jesuits. Kateri (Tekakwhitha) came after the Martyrs and is now a beacon for Indigenous peoples. So, the blood of the Martyrs became this beautiful seed for us today.”

As a Canadian national history began to take shape, French Canadian Catholic clergy sought to frame that history in religious terms, highlighting figures such as the Jesuit Martyrs as spiritual heroes.

In 1844, Fr. Jean-Pierre Chazelle travelled to Upper Canada (Ontario) and, while visiting Catholic Indigenous communities in the region, went to Ste. Marie Among the Hurons, where the ruins of the former mission were still visible.

The following year, Chazelle wrote to Toronto Bishop Michael Power expressing his desire to acquire the site, to recover the remains of the Martyrs that had not been brought to Quebec and to build a chapel on the place of their martyrdom.

By the end of the 19th century, devotion to Brébeuf, his Jesuit companions and the donnés had thus grown significantly on both sides of the border. This growing devotion would soon take tangible form.

The desire expressed by Chazelle in 1844 carried into the 20th century. In the early 1900s, the approximate site where Brébeuf and Lalemant were martyred was discovered (later, the woodsman Alphonse Arpin would find the place that is now marked as St. Ignace II).

In 1907, a small shrine was built on the identified site at Waubaushene, on a location known as Martyrs’ Hill. For nearly 20 years, thousands of pilgrims visited the modest shrine, where several miracles were said to have taken place.

Simultaneously, the cause of the Canadian Martyrs was advancing, and they were beatified in Rome on June 21, 1925, by Pope Pius XI. In churches across Quebec and Ontario, a pastoral letter signed by bishops and archbishops was read aloud, recounting the story of the Martyrs and emphasizing how Providence, through this beatification, “gives Canada its first blessed and invites us to draw from their protection and the lesson of their heroic death.” Nearly 6,000 people gathered at Ste. Marie for an outdoor Mass.

The momentum did not stop there. In 1925, Jesuit priest and architect John Filion began the construction of a new and larger church on the site of the actual Shrine, even as the cause of the Martyrs continued to be examined in Rome. The church is unique, with its wood wall and its longhouse or reversed canoes shape, reflecting Filion’s desire to create a space that was both European and Indigenous. The church was built in only one year. On June 27, 1926, 13,000 pilgrims attended its inauguration, celebrated by Toronto Archbishop Neil McNeil and seven Canadian bishops during a Pontifical High Mass. Continuing Filion’s work, the Shrine’s first director, Fr. Joseph A. Keating, oversaw the completion of the church’s stone towers in 1927, as well as the development of the grounds and the installation of an outdoor Way of the Cross.

The new Martyrs’ Shrine quickly attracted pilgrims.

However, this history was only the beginning of the Shrine’s story. The Sacred Congregation of Rites soon ordered that the cause be resumed with a view to canonization. Almost exactly four years after their beatification, the Canadian Martyrs were canonized by Pope Pius XI on June 29, 1930. A crowd of 7,000 pilgrims gathered at the Martyrs’ Shrine to celebrate Canada’s first saints.

The history and activities of the Martyrs’ Shrine are inseparable from that of the Ste. Marie Among the Hurons village. In 1940, the Jesuits purchased the property in order to undertake archaeological excavations. Archeologists uncovered key elements of the mission, including the Jesuit residence, the forge and the church.

“It was an exciting time for both historical research and the story of our Canadian saints,” said O’Brien.

The Jesuits, however, were especially eager to locate the burial site of Brébeuf and Lalemant. In the summer of 1954, new excavations finally brought to light the remains of Brébeuf’s coffin (which likely also contained the remains of Lalemant), along with a plaque, now displayed in the museum, bearing the inscription: “P. Jean de Brébeuf brûlé par les Iroquois le 17 de mars l’an 1649.”

Over time, the Martyrs’ Shrine has become a place not only of memory, but of encounter, drawing visitors from across the Catholic world.

Pope John Paul II would visit on Sept. 15, 1984, a visit that marked a turning point in the public visibility of the Shrine when nearly 100,000 people gathered to welcome him.

At Ste. Marie, he paused in prayer at the tomb of Brébeuf and Lalemant, reconsecrated the reconstructed church and met with Indigenous youth in a recreated longhouse.

He then travelled by Popemobile to the Shrine, where members of various First Nations, including chiefs from across Ontario, had assembled.

After praying before the relics and presiding over a special service for the sick, he celebrated an outdoor Mass. The altar erected on that occasion still stands today. From his very first words, he signaled the importance of Indigenous cultures: “Chay! With this traditional Huron word of welcome, I greet you all.”

His liturgy of the word reflected on the legacy of the Martyrs and the future of the Church among Indigenous peoples.

Advertisement

His address also highlighted Chiwatenhwa and his family and affirmed the place of Indigenous cultures within the Church.

The impact of the Pope’s visit has endured. In 1988, more than 5,000 pilgrims returned to the Shrine to mark the papal visit’s fourth anniversary, and a small museum in the lower level of the church displayed objects used by John Paul II during his time there.