One hundred and ten years ago, on December 22, 1910, Henry Laffoley, then 21 years old, lived in the Fruing Company house in Caraquet with the company manager, Nick de Ste-Croix. Three years earlier, on the island of Jersey, his father had signed his employment contract with the company, which guaranteed him a job and lodgings. The contract included a promise to protect his morals, meaning no “flirtatious” relationships with Catholics. But then, on Christmas Eve 1910, while Laffoley was attending a religious service at the small Protestant church behind the Young family’s house, someone informed Mr. de Ste-Croix that Laffoley was in love with Cécile Chiasson from lower Caraquet and was about to convert to Catholicism. De Ste-Croix panicked and telegraphed his boss in Lamèque, Georges Leriche, to inform him of the situation. Leriche told him not to waste any time and to transfer Laffoley to Lamèque first thing the next morning. What these Jersey residents didn’t know was that the priest in Lamèque was aware of the telegram exchange and, of course, informed the priest in Caraquet. With the help of Member of Parliament Séraphin Léger and the owner of Château Albert, Pierre Albert, they picked up Laffoley from his workplace, took him to the College, dressed him in new clothes, and escorted him to the church where he was baptized Catholic that same evening. He spent the night at Château Albert and was dismissed by the company on New Year’s Eve. He spent the winter at the College, married Cécile in the spring, and settled in Bathurst where he raised a family of eleven children, several of whose descendants still live there. Henry Laffoley died in 1977 at the age of 88.

Bernard Thériault, historian