To this barrier of immense distances are added for long months, unfavourable climatic conditions.  The very severe cold, the high winds which have such a sweep on the boundless prairies, the terrific blizzards of the long winter months, will always remain great obstacles to an intense Catholic life in rural parishes.  Many Sundays, from December to March, it is a real impossibility for those who live at any distance to go to Church.

And who are those who have settled on our Western plains?  This is not the place to discuss the immigration policies of the past.  We are dealing with facts.  We have the most cosmopolitan population one could imagine.  The most divergent factors go to make up the racial composition of our western population.  We know of a city parish that counted 16 different nationalities within its boundaries.  During the first and second generation, during what we would call the period of Canadianization of these various national elements, the Church has to face a most difficult and complex situation.

Diversity of nations means variety of ideals, differences of customs and traditions.  The disassociation from former relations and the sudden transfer to new conditions of life, have proved to be such a shock to many settlers that they fail to readjust their lives to the arising needs.  “Separated from the influences of his early life the immigrant is apt to suffer from disintegrating reaction amid the perplexing distractions, difficulties and dangers of his new environment.  Frequently it happens that old associations are destroyed and there is no substitution of the best standards in the new environment.  A vacuum is created which invites the inrush of destructive influences.”  How many foreigners have been lost to the Church because the teachings of their Faith were no longer handed down to them, wrapped up, we would say, in the folds of their national customs and celebrations!  The oriental and southern mind is more particularly susceptible to the influence of this national tinge with which religion itself comes to them.

The fusion of so many ethnical groups and their adaptation to new surroundings are the result of a very delicate and slow process, especially in rural communities.  “You cannot play with human chemicals any more than with real ones.  You have to know something of chemistry,” said Winston Churchill.  Thousands of foreigners have been lost to the faith because many of our own, clergy and laity, did not know the first elements of “human chemistry.”  The great leakage from the Church in the West is among Catholic immigrants.  Unscrupulous proselytisers on the specious plea of “Canadianization” have weaned them from the faith of their fathers.  This nefarious process is still at work, especially in the Ruthenian settlements.

The number of languages complicates still more this ethnical problem.  Not hearing the Catholic doctrine in his own language and crippled by that instinctive shyness and extreme reserve which seem to grasp him as he steps on our shores, the foreigner often loses contact with the Church.  Like a transplanted shrub in an uncongenial soil, he languishes for years in his faith and its practices.