 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Adrien-Gabriel Morice" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(November 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Adrien-Gabriel Morice | |
|---|---|
 Father Adrien-Gabriel Morice | |
| Born | 27 August 1859 Saint-Mars-sur-Colmont, France |
| Died | 21 April 1939 (1939-04-22) (aged 79) |
| Occupation(s) | Oblatemissionary, author,linguist |
Adrien-Gabriel Morice (27 August 1859 – 21 April 1939) was amissionary priest belonging to theOblates of Mary Immaculate. He served as a missionary in Canada, and created a writing system for theCarrier language.
Father Morice was born and raised in France, in the commune ofSaint-Mars-sur-Colmont in the département ofMayenne. As a seminarian he was inspired byFather Émile Petitot and set himself the goal of becoming a missionary and explorer in Northwestern Canada. He arrived inBritish Columbia in 1880, and after a stint inWilliams Lake at St. Joseph's school, where he studiedChilcotin and, with the aid of Jimmy Alexander, the son of a Carrier woman and a fur trader who was sent to St. Joseph's School, began his study of Carrier.
In 1885 his dreams were realized and he was posted toFort St. James, the fur trading and missionary center in the Carrier region. Father Morice rapidly learned the Carrier language and became the only missionary to speak more than rudimentary Carrier. Within a few months of his arrival he created the first writing system for Carrier, theCarrier syllabics, by making a radical adaptation of theCree syllabics. From 1891 to 1894 he published a bimonthly newspaper, theDustl'us Nawhulnuk, in Carrier. He was responsible for the translation of the catechism and many hymns and prayers into the language.
Father Morice was the first person to recognize all of the phonological distinctions in anAthabascan language and write it accurately.
He was also the first person produce extensive documentation of an Athabascan language. His magnum opus was his massive two volumeThe Carrier Language: A Grammar and Dictionary, which immediately made Carrier by far the best documented Athabascan language of the time.[1][2]
Father Morice would have preferred to remain in Fort St. James but in 1904 he was withdrawn by the bishop, who finally paid heed to the complaints of the Hudson's Bayfactor. Father Morice proved unwilling to perform the other duties the bishop assigned him and unable to get along with other priests, so after several years of conflict the Church set him up in a house inWinnipeg where he spent the remainder of his life as a scholar, writing extensively on Carrier language and culture, more general Athabaskan topics, the history of theRoman Catholic church in Western Canada, the history of the French andMétis of the West, and occasional other topics.
Morice River,[3]Morice Lake,[4]Morice Range,[5] Camp Morice (Fort Saint James), andMoricetown[6] – all located in theBulkley region of northwest British Columbia, are named in honour of Morice. In 2018, Moricetown reverted to its original name ofWitset.[7]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
