Couture, Joseph-Marie

Joseph-Marie Couture, S.J. was born on October 17, 1885 in St-Ansèlme-de-Beauce, Quebec to François-Xavier Couture and Madeleine Audet. Fatherr. Couture was a direct descendent of Guillaume Couture, a Normandy-born Jesuit who ministered in New France and sat on the Iroquois Council in the 1640s prior to the Suppression.

Called to missionary life after reading about the work of Saint Francis Xavier (his father’s namesake), Couture entered the novitiate at Sault-au-Récollet in Montreal on September 13, 1906. Here, he began his studies before moving on to study philosophy at Collège Immaculée-Conception from 1910 to 1913. Following his academic studies, Fatherr. Couture was assigned to study Ojibwe at the residential school at Spanish, Ontario. There he served as prefect of discipline, choir director, and travelling assistant to Théodore Desautels, S.J. He returned to Immaculée-Conception to study theology in 1918, and was ordained in Montreal on January 25, 1922. He completed spiritual theology at Collège St-Jean-Berchmans in Belgium in 1923 and said his final vows on February 2, 1924.

Fatherr. Couture spent a year at Wikwemikong refreshing his Ojibwe with a guide before settling at Longlac, Ontario in 1924, where he would remain until his death 26 years later. Here, Fr. Couturehe was charged with responsibility for a ministry that covered 75,000 square miles of territory until the return of the Oblates in 1940. Unlike his predecessors who travelled only in warmer months, Fatherr. Couture would travel through the winter by employing sleigh dogs. In 1936, Fr. Couturehe learned to fly and introduced aviation to the Canadian North, flying materials into the communities and commuting between different villages by plane, ultimately earning him the nickname “flying padre.” His Ojibwe name was Neendamishkang, “the one we like to see come,” due to his habit of singing as he paddled in from the Albany River by canoe each summer. Fatherr. Couture had an affinity for music and recorded many Ojibwe hymns which were distributed to other community members via small portable gramophones.

When the Oblate fathers returned to staff the Albany River missions, Fr.he Couture sold his plane. He died in Longlac, Ontario of a heart attack March 4, 1949.