Maurice, William

Father William P. Maurice, S.J. was born on January 13, 1916, in Lachine, Quebec to Thomas Maurice and Rosa Tenanchuk. The family relocated to Ingersoll, Ontario, where Fr. Maurice was raised and attended grade school from 1920-1933. On September 7th, 1937, Fr. Maurice was accepted into the Jesuit Novitiate in Guelph, Ontario. On September 8th, 1939, he pronounced his first, permanent vows as a Jesuit.

Fr. Maurice completed his two-year Novitiate and two-year Juniorate in Guelph, followed by three years of philosophy at the Jesuit Seminary in Toronto. From 1944-1946, he was a scholastic at Spanish Residential School, Ontario, where he began to learn Ojibwe, and from 1946-1947, he taught grade 8 at Loyola High School in Montreal, Quebec. On the 25th of June 1950, he was ordained a priest. Between 1953 and 1956 he completed summer courses in Elementary and High School teaching at the Ontario College of Education (now the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education).

Fr. Maurice finalized his vows on February 2nd, 1953. His ministry lasted over thirty years, during which time he held various appointments in the Society and in the Church. He was appointed to Spanish Residential School from 1952-1958, where he served as Principal and prefect, and oversaw the school’s eventual closure. He was then a teacher and spiritual director in Regina, Saskatchewan (1958-1960), a parish priest and missionary in Armstrong, Ontario (1960-1963) and a pastor and missionary at the Fort William Reserve, Ontario (1963-1978). In 1978, he moved to the Holy Cross Mission in Wiikwemkoong, Ont., and in 1984, he was assigned to Beardmore, Ontario, where he would stay until his retirement in 1991. During his time in Beardmore, he produced a dictionary of the Ojibwe language, and became a genealogist of the Northern Ontario region – a practice that he continued in his retirement.

Fr. Maurice passed away on the 14th of April, 2008.