Our Lady of the Cape

The miracle, before you, came to be because of faith and the hard work behind that faith. The early settlers to the New World, with hope and determination, laid the foundation of what you see, when you visit the awesome Cap-de-la-Madeleine.

But let us begin at the beginning. The French government sent missionaries and explorers to the New World. In 1534, Jacques Cartier took possession of territory and called it New France in the name of the King of France. However, the founding of a permanent colony was not to come about until 1608, when Samuel de Champlain opened a relay station in Québec.

Now, Cap-de-la-Madeleine, at that time, was just a sandy strip of land. But to the Jesuits who received it from a fellow Jesuit, the Pastor of Sainte Marie Madeleine in France, it was a little bit of heaven. He only made one provision, the land would be used for evangelization. No sooner done, on September 8, 1635, Cap-de-la-Madeleine was to receive its first missionary, Father Jacques Buteux, a Jesuit. The tiny handful of settlers and the American Indians were to hear the Gospel of our Lord preached by Father, until a few years later, when he was martyred by the Iroquois Indians, on May 10, 1652.