Oblate presence: 1926-1968. Geographic location: south shore of Montreal.

In a letter dated April 3, 1926, Father G.É. Villeneuve, provincial, made the following request to Bishop Gauthier, Administrator of Montreal: “I have, indeed, to expose to Your Excellency, a project that we have long desired to see realized; it is the foundation of a juniorate in the vicinity of Montreal. As we have had a few acres of land in Chambly for a long time, we ask Your Excellency to allow us to build this juniorate there.”

In the following letter dated April 7, 1926, the Administrator welcomed the plea: “I acknowledge receipt of your letter of April 3, 1926 in which you asked for permission to establish a juniorate in Chambly. It goes without saying that I am very happy to grant it to you. I have an opportunity that I do not want to miss: to thank the Oblate Congregation for the immense service it has rendered to the Catholic cause in our country. I hope that in this new house you will form missionaries who will follow in the footsteps of those elders whom we venerate as heroes and who have given us the example of the purest apostolic spirit.”

On August 2, the Provincial wrote to Father Victor Jodoin that the General Council had approved his appointment as superior of the “new Mary Immaculate Juniorate located in Chambly Bassin and that, by virtue of a decision of […] Our Father General, the said Juniorate of Mary Immaculate has been canonically founded.”

It became a seminary in 1949.

Letter of February 15, 1967. “After a few hours of deliberations, the above Council [Oblate Seminary of Mary Immaculate, City of Chambly] unanimously adopted the following resolution: That at the end of this school year, the Oblate Seminary of Mary Immaculate cease its activities as a Oblate minor seminary.”

Father Henri Dulude, o.m.i., writes in a brief history: “Why did our seminary close in 1967? The evolution of our society, the evolution in the field of education due to the Parent Report, all this led us to close our doors. It was then that the Oblate authorities rented the seminary with an option to purchase to the Ambar Institute on September 11, 1970. And on February 6, 1978, the Oblates sold the seminary to the Ambar Institute, which resold it to the Government of Quebec.”

Eugène Lapointe OMI