THE MITRED WARRIOR: A critical reassessment of Bishop Michael Francis Fallon, 1867-1931.

Michael Francis Fallon was the fifth bishop of the Diocese of London, serving from late 1909 until his death in 1931. He left his imprint not only on the diocese itself, where he remains a towering figure, but also on the entire province of Ontario. His episcopacy coincided with a period of considerable growth in the self-confidence of Ontario's minority Catholic community. They successfully endured another round in the periodic language wars, responded in huge numbers to the patriotic demands of the First World War, and agitated on behalf of separate schools in the 1920s. Each of these issues or events acted as a catalyst for English-speaking Catholics to assert their own identity within the Canadian Church, historically dominated by French-speaking Quebec, and to establish themselves as a legitimate political and cultural force that deserved the respect of the province's overwhelming Protestant majority. In national terms, this assertion entailed an English-speaking face for the Catholic Church west of the Ottawa River. Within Ontario, it translated into English Catholic control of the separate school system. [1] In the Diocese of London, it meant that Bishop Fallon would have to struggle to secure proper recognition for Catholics, as individuals, as a local community of faith, and as members of the Universal Church. He wanted the Protestant establishment to start taking Catholics seriously, beginning with him. [2]

It was an uphill fight. On both fronts of the tumultuous battle to arm his fellow Catholics for life in the modern, industrialized world, Fallon acted as the de facto head of his brother bishops in Ontario. We must keep in mind that Fallon was strongly influenced by the positive dynamism of the Second Spring of Catholicism in England, where Wiseman, Newman, and Manning had become household names and where thousands of converts had flocked to the faith. When he was a young priest-professor and later a bishop, Fallon thought that the time was ripe for Catholics in his native province to experience their own Second Spring, to grow in numbers and prosperity in step with Canada's evolution as a modern, forward-looking nation, second only to the Mother Country in the Empire.

As an apologist for English-speaking Catholics west of Quebec and a defender of the Catholic Church, Bishop Fallon had no equal in the Canadian hierarchy of his day. He was a born debater. Given a public stage and a subject dear to his heart, he was unfailingly brilliant and forceful and even dazzling at times. In lectures, speeches, and sermons from the pulpit, in open letters to politicians, in countless newspaper interviews and letters to the editor and in his voluminous official correspondence, Fallon put forth his ideas and opinions on an astonishing range of divisive issues, any one of which would have satisfied the aspirations of the average disputant. But Fallon was hardly average. He made known his views on the perils of bilingual elementary education, English as the language of economic survival, university degrees for Catholic men and women, Irish Home Rule, the British Empire, change to the Coronation Oath, the persecution of Catholics in France in 1905, the Church in Western Canada, the need for conscription, separate schools and corporate taxes, the disastrous dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the folly of prohibition; the list goes on. It forms an impressive dossier and is a lasting testament to the brilliance and audacity of his pugnacious personality.

Fallon's performances in front of crowds numbering in the thousands were always special events. His speeches displayed substance as well as style, an easy mastery of the facts and just enough raw emotion and razor-sharp wit to give pause to his adversaries. The press often gave him front-page coverage and the lead editorial whenever he spoke. At Massey Hall in Toronto, his favourite venue, and at the Russell Theatre in Ottawa, he held his audiences in awe for hours, usually without notes or props of any kind, and at the end he would lead everyone in singing "O Canada."

Fallon was "a man of majestic physical bearing, who attracted attention wherever he went." [3] The addition of the mitre at liturgical functions made him look almost gigantic. There are many stories still circulating that the mere sight of him in his episcopal vestments terrorized confirmation classes throughout the diocese. [4] In his youth, he had been a star rugby player and coach. Those who knew him say that he had a healthy sense of humour, was friendly towards people, and was extremely loyal to his large family and many supporters. And it was obvious to all that he had a genuine concern for the well-being of Catholic children. One of his most earnest desires was that the upcoming generations of Catholic men and women take their rightful places at the forefront of Canadian society. To do this, according to Fallon, Catholics had to be educated in the English language, more of them had to matriculate into high school, and the very best had to attend university, join the professions, and be the leaders of their communities.

Bishop Fallon's Achilles heel was an unfortunate tendency to be blunt and undiplomatic, to bully his opponents into submission and to make public his opinions at times when silence would have been the wiser course of action. Also, he was prone to underestimating the determination of his opponents to destroy him. His enemies, especially those in the French Canadian camp, were quick to exploit these faults, attack him in the press, and fight him in the courts of Rome. Fallon on the defensive was not an appealing character. [5]

The Mitred Warrior was loved and loathed in almost equal proportions. Because he could be such a seeming contradiction--the Catholic champion who was despised by the Quebec bishops, an Irish Home Ruler who ardently defended the British Empire, the perfectly bilingual bishop who had no use for bilingual education--Fallon's historical reputation remains something of a riddle. Was he the ogre of all things French Canadian, as Henri Bourassa and other Quebec nationalists painted him? Or was he a man "endowed with the essential qualities of greatness" whose passing was "an undoubted loss to the national life of our country," as Sir Robert Laird Borden wrote to one of his brothers? [6]

Early years, education and ordination

Michael Francis Fallon was born on 17 May 1867 in Kingston, Ontario, the eldest child of Dominic Fallon, an Irish immigrant, and Bridget Egan. He had seven brothers and at least one sister, Annie. Two of the brothers, James and Charles, also became members of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The family was close knit and remained devoted to one another.

Fallon received his elementary education from the Christian Brothers and his secondary education at Kingston Collegiate Institute. He graduated in 1883 when he was barely seventeen years of age. Precocity was the hallmark of his student days. Moreover, it was rare for a Catholic in his day to finish high school and rarer still to proceed to university studies. Fallon did precisely that. He attended Queen's University for one academic year, 1883-84, and then transferred to the University of Ottawa. The move to Ottawa was to have a profound effect on the course of Fallon's life. During his undergraduate years, he was involved in dramatics and the debating club, was the first editor of The Owl, the student newspaper, and played for the nationally known rugby team. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and history, in 1889, with the designation "Cum Laude."

Michael Fallon could have chosen any number of career paths. Politics or journalism or academia would have been natural choices. Success in the young Dominion of Canada was guaranteed him. However, he chose the Church and not the world. The Church was Fallon's first love, and he would be devoted to her for the rest of his life. In the autumn of 1889, he entered the seminary in Ottawa, where he studied theology for the next three years. The priesthood was his goal, but in 1892 he made yet another momentous decision: he joined the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and was sent to their novitiate at SaintGerlach in Holland. Thus began Fallon's fateful return journey to his alma mater and his long association with Europe.

However, Holland was too damp, and his superiors feared that he might fall ill with tuberculosis. Rome was his next destination. The warmer climate was the perfect tonic for the young Fallon to pursue his studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University. The year 1894 was a busy one for him. He earned a Doctor of Divinity degree, took final vows on 29 June and was ordained a priest on 29 July. He was only twenty-seven years old.

University of Ottawa and St. Joseph's Church

The Oblates recognized a rising star among their ranks and sent Fallon to the University of Ottawa, where he assumed the Chair of English Literature and took over the duties of the rugby coach. His teams never lost a game. In 1896, Fallon was appointed vice-rector of the university, to assist the ailing rector, Father J.M. McGuckin, O.M.I., a native of Tipperary. The university was in a moribund state and desperately needed new and vigorous leadership. There had been some talk of making Fallon the rector, but his age and inexperience in administrative matters precluded such a bold move on the part of the Oblates. For the next two years, Fallon's talent for administration was often put to the test but was never found wanting.

As Fallon blossomed in the academic world so too did his presence off the campus. His growing stature at the university attracted the notice of official Ottawa. In 1897, he was invited to give the sermon as part of the Thanksgiving Service on the occasion of the first anniversary of the rescue of the Countess Aberdeen, the wife of the Governor General, at Gatineau Point. Fallon took the occasion to air his unabashed devotion to the British Empire:

I regard the British Empire as the last and greatest human barrier against the spread of vicious and dangerous doctrines concerning social order and international polity; as the most powerful human influence to lead men upwards and onwards in the path of human progress, and in the development for future ages of the untold possibilities hidden in the great mysterious darkness of the speechless days that shall be. [7]

Fallon was an ardent imperialist because he believed that the British institutions of crown, parliament, and common law were the best guarantees of corporate and individual freedom in a world beset by aggressive nationalism. [8] He had not forgotten the chauvinism of German theological students in Europe. Their behaviour acted as a warning of things to come. For the rest of his life, Fallon was deeply suspicious of any type of nationalism, because it precluded the notions of fair play and mutual respect and gave legitimacy to aggression against one's neighbours.

He repeated the theme of the 1897 sermon at a church parade in 1910 for the Seventh Fusiliers of London. Fallon predicted that one day soon they would be fighting either Germany or Japan. Sam Hughes, the Minister of Militia, was so moved by Fallon's prediction of war that he ordered copies of the sermon to be distributed to all Militia officers. Although the peace and prosperity of Edwardian times continued, Fallon continued to warn those who would listen about an impending catastrophic war. On 5 January 1911, he spoke to the Canadian Club in London. In the audience were several high profile members of the Liberal government, including Mackenzie King. This time Fallon was even more direct in his warning about Germany's militaristic intentions: "It is my deliberate conviction," he said, "that Germany intends to try to take command of the world's affairs." [9]

How, then, did Fallon square his idealization of the British Empire with his plea for Home Rule for Ireland? In Fallon's eyes, even though the Empire was essential to the freedom of its many members, there was no excuse for England's gross mistreatment of the Irish. Fallon favoured a Canadian-style Dominion status for Ireland. He envisioned a federation of two provinces: North and South. Each province would have its own parliament in its own capital, Belfast for the North and Dublin for the South, with Dublin also serving as the national capital and home to an all-Ireland parliament. Fallon's proposal found its way, via Ottawa, to Lloyd George, the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Anxious to have Fallon act as a mediator, Lloyd George invited him to 10 Downing Street, probably in 1918. The whole affair came to nothing, however, when Fallon discovered that the British were spying on him on board the convoy ship taking him to England. As a result of this treachery, Fallon called Lloyd George "faithless and perf idious" [10] and ended his co-operation.

Fallon's frustration about the fate of the Irish did not end there. At one point during the Irish War of Independence, prior to partition in 1920, he thundered from the pulpit at St. Peter's Cathedral that "The blackguardism of British rule in Ireland at the present time, in spite of all the talk during the past six years about liberty and justice, is such as no degradation or brutality known of could surpass." [11] Ireland, which Fallon likened to Christ crucified, was not England's finest moment.

In the final analysis, though, Fallon clung to the Empire. When asked near the end of his life why he was still an Imperialist, the Great War having ended long ago, Fallon responded: "I am an Irishman. It would be hypocrisy for me to say that I have forgotten the cruelties of the English people toward my Irish ancestors. But I am ready to forgive, and that for the sake of the wider cause." [12] That wider cause was the welfare of all the member states of the Empire and Fallon's fear of another world war.

Let us return to the University of Ottawa. When McGuckin was replaced in 1898, Fallon was passed over for promotion. By rights, the rectorship should have gone to him. Instead, it was awarded to a French-Canadian, Father H.A. Constantineau, O.M.I. Constantineau's agenda was to refashion the university using a bilingual curriculum. This was absolute anathema to Fallon, the leader of the so-called Irish faction in Ottawa. To Fallon and many other alumni, the university had been founded by and for English-speaking Catholics. [13] He harboured a private hope that the University of Ottawa would be transformed into a national Catholic university, similar to the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. That hope was dashed with Constantineau's appointment. Indeed, 1898 signalled the beginning of the university's transformation into a stronghold of the French-Canadian Oblates that would leave Fallon and the Irish faction on the outside looking in.

Since there was not sufficient room for both Fallon and Constantineau at the university, Fallon was made parish priest of St. Joseph's Church, which was located directly across from the campus. [14] He continued to lecture and involve himself ever more deeply in the cultural life of Ottawa's Irish community. His attachment to that community was sealed with an April 1898 article in The Owl that praised the rebels of the 1798 uprising in Ireland and criticized the Irish bishops for being so distant from their people.

It was while he was at St. Joseph's that Fallon found his voice as a controversialist. And a powerful voice it was. Three examples will suffice. As Queen Victoria's reign was nearing its end, he called for the removal of the Declaration against Transubstantiation in the Coronation Oath. In a lecture given on 16 February 1889, to a large and appreciative audience at Academic Hall in the University of Ottawa, he claimed that "The Sovereign of the British Empire rules a mixed people, and no offensive word should pass the royal lips regarding the humblest and most insignificant subject." [15] His lecture was later published and was influential in the removal of the declaration in time for the coronation of George V in 1911. On an entirely different front, he engaged in a trenchant war of words with the eminent lawyer and Anglican evangelical Samuel Hume Blake, on the wording of the episcopal oath to the Pope, and with the Reverend J.F. Gorman, the Anglican vicar of Grace Church, Ottawa, on Anglican claims to Cat holicity. In each case, the controversy was published blow-by-blow in the press, attracting national attention.

Holy Angels Church, Buffalo, New York, Oblate Provincial

Fallon was wildly popular in Ottawa, but that did not stop the Oblates from banishing him to Holy Angels parish in Buffalo, New York. He was notified on 10 June 1901 and given two weeks to leave. Bitter, Fallon blamed a French-Canadian conspiracy for both his removal as vice-rector and his banishment from the country. [16] He considered himself an exile from Canada's capital to the backwoods of Buffalo. Fallon had a long memory and could be quite vindictive towards those who had made him suffer.

From his new base at Holy Angels, he continued to do what he did best: preach and lecture and engage in lively controversy. In no time, he had built up a new base of support and admiration and was as popular as ever with the people. With their financial help, he built a magnificent parochial school, also named Holy Angels. In 1904, his superiors appointed him the Provincial of the newly-created American Province of the Oblates. For the next five years, using Holy Angels as his home base, Fallon conducted missions and retreats in nearly every state of the United States and in every province in Canada. He acquired an intimate knowledge of the state of the Church in Western Canada and British Columbia and spent time ministering to Protestants, bringing many of them into the Church.

His catechetical work among Protestants caught the attention of Archbishop Donatus Sbarretti, the Apostolic Delegate to Canada. In 1908, Sbarretti asked Fallon to write a report on the Church in Western Canada and to undertake an investigation into a scandal at the mission in Kamloops, British Columbia. So impressed was the Apostolic Delegate by Fallon's forthrightness and honesty that he submitted Fallon's name as a candidate to fill the See of Victoria, British Columbia. [17]

Sbarretti's nomination went nowhere in Rome, but in 1909 he had two more chances to put forth Fallon's name to the Roman authorities as a worthy consideration. The two sees were Regina and London. The new See of Regina went to Olivier-Elzear Mathieu. London had been without a bishop since the promotion of Fergus McEvay to the Archdiocese of Toronto in April 1908. Rome rejected the first terna of candidates (a list of three names ranked in order of preference) partly because none of them spoke French. The second terna included Father Fallon of Buffalo as the third choice. Despite Fallon's ranking, Sbarretti actively promoted his candidacy, pointing out to the cardinals in Rome that he was perfectly fluent in French and thus would be able to minister to the sizeable number of French Catholics in the Diocese of London. Sbarretti won the day. If there was ever a moment of unintended irony in the career of Michael Francis Fallon, it was his choice as Bishop of London because he was bilingual! Fallon was elected bishop on 14 December 1909 and consecrated in a solemn four-hour ceremony at St. Peter's Cathedral, on 25 April 1910.

The choice of Fallon was a complete surprise all around. Even he was taken aback. Believing that he would never return to his home country, at least in any official capacity, he had taken out American citizenship. For his old nemeses at the University of Ottawa, who had never forgiven nor forgotten him for his English-only stand, Fallon's completely unexpected reappearance on the Canadian scene was nothing short of a disaster-in-the-making. The same held true for the leaders of the French-Canadians in the Diocese of London. Allying themselves with anti-Fallon forces from the University of Ottawa, they were only too willing to help the disaster come to fruition.

Bishop of London

Fallon was to spend the rest of his days as Bishop of London. Save for the last three years of his life, when he was severely ill with diabetes, his reign of nearly twenty-one years was marred by a series of ugly confrontations. To this very day, they tend to dwarf his many accomplishments on behalf of the diocese and, if not considered within the context of his entire episcopacy, they severely distort the historical truth. Fallon put London on the map, so to speak, but he also put himself under fire, first with his French-speaking diocesans and later with the Basilians at Assumption College in Sandwich (now a part of Windsor).

Bishop Fallon had a life-long passion for education. He fought hard and courageously on behalf of separate schools in the 1920s taxation and extension campaign. Among the Catholic bishops of Ontario, he was the chief proponent of Catholic higher education. They were only too happy to let Fallon walk the plank for them. However, the internecine struggle over bilingual education in the elementary schools mushroomed into a revolt among many of the French-speaking clergy in Essex County and culminated in a nasty riot at a parish in Ford City (also now a part of Windsor). His battle with the Basilians over the future location of the Arts Department of Assumption College was conducted in private but was no less injurious to the corporate welfare of the Catholic faithful.

It would take a good-size book to cover all the details of the bilingual schools imbroglio. For our purposes a summary of events will suffice. On one level, Fallon only had himself to blame. He was the one who asked for a meeting with a government member on the subject of bilingual schools, the majority of which were also Catholic separate schools. Fallon was prompted to take the initiative by the published demands of the Association canadien-francaise d'education de 1'Ontario. At its January 1910 congress in Ottawa, the ACFEO demanded that the government rationalize and extend bilingual education, establish bilingual Normal schools (teachers' colleges) and secondary schools, and revise the division of taxes between the public and separate boards. The Ontario bishops were horrified. Such demands could scuttle their attempt to win new concessions on separate schools from Premier Sir James Whitney, hence the Fallon meeting with W.J. Hanna, provincial secretary, on 22 May 1910 in Sarnia.

In the course of their conversation, Fallon called for the immediate abolition of bilingual schools. In his estimation, they were failing to prepare boys and girls for life in an English-speaking province on an English-speaking continent. Hanna prepared a memorandum of their talk and sent it to Dr. R.Q. Pyne, Minister of Education. The memorandum was potentially explosive if it fell into the wrong hands.

What happened next made Fallon a victim of political sabotage. H.C.A. Maisonville, private secretary to the Minister of Public Works, laid his hands on a copy of the memorandum and sent it to the French-language press, which duly published it and used it as a launching pad in an all-out attack against Fallon. Shortly thereafter, the memorandum appeared in every major Canadian newspaper. [18] An uproar followed, forcing Fallon to reply with an explanation, which only made matters worse. [19] But his subsequent confirmation tours of traditional French parishes in his diocese only confirmed the truth of his opinion. In his question-and-answer sessions with the children, many of whom were the products of bilingual schools, he discovered to his horror that they were functionally illiterate in both English and French. He knew that they would not pass the entrance examinations into high school and would be condemned to a life of menial labour.

The publication of the memorandum and Fallon's defence of it opened up two avenues of reaction. The first reaction was political. The Whitney government instructed F. W. Merchant, a senior official in the Department of Education, to write a report on the state of the province's bilingual schools. He began his investigation on 2 November 1910 and completed his report on 24 February 1912. Merchant found that the quality of teaching was substandard and that student attendance was too irregular, but he did not condemn bilingual schools because he found examples of these schools that compared favourably with English-only schools. Therefore, to improve the entire system of bilingual schools, he recommended that they should be integrated with the high school system, that the teachers should receive upgrading, and that inspection should be more rigorous and consistent. [20]

However, the government, in its own infinite wisdom, chose to ignore Merchant's moderate recommendations and issued what became the infamous Regulation 17, dated 17 June 1912. It severely curtailed the use of French as a language of instruction, the goal being its complete elimination from the classroom, except as one subject among many.

Bishop Fallon had nothing to do with Regulation 17 (which was stricken by the government in 1927). Although the regulation may have reflected his uncompromising views on the just fate of classroom bilingualism, its wording and promulgation were strictly government policy. But perception is everything in politics. The leaked memorandum made sure that Fallon and Regulation 17 were inextricably linked together, as if the former had been the cause of the latter. That was nonsense, of course, but Fallon could do little to dispel this perception, which guaranteed its long life as an albatross around his neck.

The second reaction was also political but of a far nastier kind. Church politics came to the fore. The memorandum and ensuing uproar emboldened Fallon's critics among his French-Canadian clergy. Many of them never liked him and never wanted him, and they plotted to have him removed as their bishop. It was a risky business but one which they pursued with venomous relish in a campaign of memorials, letters, petitions, and an ecclesiastical lawsuit against Fallon brought by one of their number who contested the division of his parish. Father L.A. Beaudoin, the long-time pastor of Our Lady of the Lake in Ford City, was the priest who filed the lawsuit. He emerged as the central and somewhat tragic figure in a group of dissidents that included one senior diocesan prelate, Monsignor J.E. Meunier, and Fathers P. Langlois, N.D. St. Cyr, P. L'Heureux, J.S. Loiselle, A.D. Emery, T. Martin, and L. Landreville. Each of these priests had signed a declaration, dated 19 March 1913, in support of Father Beaudoin, as part of his lawsuit against Fallon. This declaration also included the rather serious charge that he had forbidden the teaching of French to French-Canadian children and the preaching in French to French-speaking congregations.

As soon as Fallon got wind of their protests to Rome, during his ad limina visit in the summer of 1913, he decided to root out his opponents in a show of episcopal force they would never forget. He brought the signers of the petition before a special diocesan tribunal at St. Mary's Rectory in London in March 1914. In a move that was to shock the accused and enrage French-Canadian nationalists, Fallon acted as both plaintiff and judge. He demanded that they withdraw the charge that he had forbidden teaching and preaching in French.

The upshot of this appalling business was the humiliation and premature death of Monsignor Meunier; the banishment of Father St. Cyr, who had never been properly incardinated in the diocese; and the immediate suspension of Fathers Loiselle and L'Heureux, who were not reinstated until they publicly recanted. The remaining priests received a tongue lashing and were told to stay out of politics. But the matter did not end with the end of the tribunal. Joining Beaudoin's lawsuit in Rome were four additional "Fallon" issues which the dissidents formally asked the Holy Roman Rota to adjudicate: the competency of the diocesan tribunal; the declaration concerning the teaching of French; bilingual schools and the French language; and the prohibition to preach in French. [21]

This necessitated a six-week visit by the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop P.F. Stagni, who took depositions from dozens of witnesses in Windsor and Chatham. Stagni was bewildered by the conflicting nature of the evidence. In the meantime, Gaetano Cardinal De Lai, secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Consistory, informed Fallon in April 1914 that Rome wanted him to move to an American diocese. Fallon refused. [22]

In August 1914, Rome ruled on Beaudoin versus Fallon. It upheld Fallon's right to divide the parish and establish St. Ann's in Walkerville, next door to Ford City. Beaudoin's original complaint was that the division took away many of his wealthier parishioners but left him with the costly upkeep of St. Edward's separate school. [23] The court recognized the justice of this claim and ordered Fallon to pay him $7,000 plus half the court costs. [24]

Rome moves at its own pace. All was quiet in the Diocese of London until the deaths of Father Beaudoin, on 19 August 1917, and the exiled Father St. Cyr, two days later. St. Cyr had spent his last days petitioning Rome to force Fallon to pay him a pension. Both priests had died in Quebec. If one includes Monsignor Meunier, that made three priests the victims of Fallon's counter offensive. It was enough to set off yet another highly public confrontation, one that would fill the Canadian wire services for weeks.

Fallon chose Father F.X. Laurendeau to replace Beaudoin at Our Lady of the Lake. He was French and quite capable of running a parish on his own. However, he also happened to have been the secretary of the tribunal that had sat in judgment of the dissident priests. News of Laurendeau's appointment prompted the parish, with considerable help from outside agitators, to stage a full-blown riot on 8 September 1917. It involved at least 3,000 people and 100 policemen. [25] Contemporary newspaper accounts describe the women as the most ferocious fighters. The riot act was read, the army was brought in, Fallon threatened to lock the doors of the church, and a yearlong boycott of Father Laurendeau took place.

Another flood of petitions made its way to Rome. Church officials were quick to rule on Fallon's right to appoint his own parish priests and on the duty of parishioners to accept those appointments. In a separate letter, Cardinal De Lai asked Fallon to resign. He refused.

Rome's Final Judgment on the four "Fallon" issues dating from 1914 was finally handed down on 15 December 1920 and published by Fallon on 21 March 1921. The Roman court found for Fallon on each of the four claims: the diocesan tribunal had been competent to try the dissident priests; the bishop had not forbidden the teaching of French; he had not stopped his priests from preaching in French; and his opposition to bilingual education did not mean that he opposed teaching or learning French. (Indeed, Fallon was not opposed to French-only education. It would be impractical but far superior to a bilingual one.) Rome put an end to any further language conflicts in the diocese, but the fear and suspicion of Fallon on the part of French-Canadians took on a life of its own, which continues to this day.

Bishop Fallon's concern for Catholic education also extended to the realm of the university. He was so transfixed by the need for Catholics to acquire degrees that he caused the second Sunday in August to be styled Education Sunday and ordered his priests to preach on the necessity of higher education. [26]

As we have already seen, Fallon had initially wanted a national Catholic university. However, such a hope was politically impossible. As soon as Fallon realized this, he turned his efforts towards affiliating existing Catholic colleges in his diocese with the University of Western Ontario. They were Assumption College for men, located in Sandwich and directed by the Basilian Fathers, and Brescia College for women, situated at "The Pines" in Chatham and managed by the Ursulines. The Basilians and Ursulines were anxious to affiliate with Western. Only the opportunity to offer their students real university degrees would give their heroic efforts at post-secondary education the legitimacy and drawing power both schools needed in order to survive in the fast-changing, post-war world. In the case of Assumption, the Basilians had wanted affiliation as early as 1908, but the transfer of Bishop McEvay to Toronto, Fallon's hostility to the idea, and the First World War delayed their initiative for eleven years.

When Fallon was ready to move in their direction, in 1919, affiliation was only a matter of several face-to-face negotiations with Western authorities. His intervention and leadership were necessary. Neither religious community could have achieved affiliation with Western on its own. After Fallon had worked out the details in advance with the Basilians and the Ursulines, with their concurrence, he was the lone Catholic negotiator. What remained to be settled was the final legal wording and the official signatures of the involved parties. Fallon agreed to affiliation on the understanding that the Basilians and the Ursulines would move their colleges to the Western campus. It only made sense to have the Catholic colleges in London. Land was readily available, the university was expanding, and a Catholic presence on campus could not be achieved if the Catholic colleges were located in other cities.

The Ursulines had no trouble agreeing to Fallon's point of view and erected Brescia College with the financial assistance of the Gaukler family in Windsor. Mother M. Clare Gaukler, OSU, was a close friend of the bishop's and was able to persuade her parents to donate the lion's share of the money. [27]

The Basilians, however, had other ideas. They did not have the financial resources to build a college. Moreover, before they made any commitment, they wanted to monitor the proportion of American to Canadian students enrolled in Arts, over a time frame of several years. If the number of American students remained consistently higher, the chances of moving to London would be greatly diminished. The longer the Basilians, led by Father Francis Forster, resisted the bishop's many blandishments about relocating, the more frustrated and angrier Fallon became. What began as a misunderstanding turned into a contest of wills between two strong-minded men. [28]

Before long, accusations, threats, nasty letters, and lawsuits were flying in all directions. Fallon went on the offensive in an effort to make life so difficult for the Basilians that they would leave his diocese. He demanded to see a copy of the proposed new constitution of the Basilian community. When Forster refused, arguing that it had yet to receive Rome's approval and therefore was not final, Fallon suspended the faculties of all Basilians in the Diocese of London. (The Apostolic Delegate restored them, on a temporary basis, which prompted Fallon to require that each Basilian see him in person in London if he wanted his faculties renewed for the coming year.) Next, he demanded that the Basilian-run parish in Amherstburg contribute to the diocesan pension fund for priests. Then he turned his attention to the College itself. He deprived Assumption of his philosophy students--an important source of revenue--and made good on his threat to establish St. Peter's School of Philosophy, which he affiliated wit h Western through Brescia College. He also hounded the Basilians for making their senior college students teach in the high school and for allowing Father Jack Spratt to play on the college hockey team. Forster, a self-trained canon lawyer, fought back.

It was inevitable that Rome would be called upon to adjudicate. It did so, rendering four judgments in January 1925. When the dust had finally settled, Fallon was allowed to keep his school of philosophy, and the Arts Department of Assumption College remained in Sandwich.

One might be forgiven if one thought that conflict and litigation were the essence of Bishop Fallon's episcopal career, that he had a strange desire to clash with people and alienate those who differed with him, that his life could be summed up in one word: conflict. But this would be too facile a judgment and a gross disservice to his memory. Fallon had his problems but so too did his enemies and detractors. They could be proud, politically motivated in their actions against the bishop, and just as determined to stand their ground and make their case to the press. They could be no less vindictive than he. Any in-depth examination of Fallon would have to include a study of those who sought to destroy him. Strong personalities tend to attract the most determined opponents. Bishop Fallon's personality was no exception.

Also up for examination is another side to Bishop Fallon, one that is often overlooked by those quick to expose his failings and paint him in the blackest terms. [29] It is the story of a bishop who recruited Catholic chaplains during the First World War and spent several months at the front in 1918, where he became an instant celebrity among soldiers of all religious faiths and the special friend of the French-speaking Vandoos Battalion; [30] who organized a boycott of London Life Insurance because it would not hire Catholics; [31] who defended Catholic teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary against the gratuitous attacks of Canon L. Norman Tucker, rector of St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral; [32] who challenged the Reverend L.W. Reid, of London's Hale Street Methodist Church, to prove his allegation that the Catholic Church was aiding bootleggers in Essex County; [33] who was offered the Chancellor-ship of the University of Western Ontario; who delivered the most stirring speech of his life to a huge audience at Massey Hall, the evening of 10 February 1922, defending separate schools; [34] who founded St. Peter's Seminary in 1912 and opened the seminary building to great acclai m on 29 September 1926; who organized Catholic Centennial Week in 1926; who founded eighteen new parishes in his diocese and built many churches; and who compiled Shorter Poems by Catholics, published in 1930. Bishop Fallon, the whole man, begs for a sympathetic and realistic historical portrait, in which his various controversies are treated as essential elements but are not allowed to overshadow his many accomplishments as bishop of London.

The last years

Bishop Fallon suffered terribly from diabetes. Doctors detected the disease around 1922. Aside from prescribing a strict diet and exercise, there was little they could do to help him cope with its debilitating effects. In its early stages, he did lose weight and play golf. However, the disease made a steady advance and began to take its toll. It aggravated Fallon's temperament and made him difficult to manage. One wonders to what extent it impaired his judgment of people and events. When he did take insulin, it caused him to have delusions of persecution. Orange juice, then, was the only remedy available to control the level of blood sugar. He spent months at a time recuperating at the LeBel family home in Corunna, near Sarnia. During the summer of 1927, the Murphy family of Detroit loaned him their yacht to cruise Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River, in quiet isolation from the busy world. [35] For the last three years of his life, he was a virtual recluse in the Precious Blood monastery. He read his brevia ry and said Mass very rarely but did manage to keep a diary, in which he remarked on 17 February 1929: "It is wise to give God His Time, if there is anything to be done. God does not need our works. He is in no hurry." [36] His final public appearance was at the blessing of the seminary chapel, on 18 June 1930. It was a trial for him to endure.

Michael Francis Fallon died on Sunday, 22 February 1931, at sixty-three years of age. He was buried in the crypt beneath the sanctuary of the seminary chapel. Perhaps the words of the Reverend John J. O'Gorman best sum up the Mitred Warrior: Bishop Fallon failed at times in patience and meekness, but God knows he did seek righteousness, piety, and charity. He knew that he would inevitably make a certain percentage of mistakes, but he preferred to make one error of commission when trying to serve God and his fellowmen rather than commit ten errors of omission by hiding in the earth the talents entrusted to him by his Lord. [37]

Michael Power has been a freelance researcher, writer, copy editor and indexer for twenty years. His latest publications include Goaded to Madness: The Battle of Slabtown and Assumption College: The Struggle to Survive, 1920-1940. Mr. Power lives with his wife and daughter in Welland, Ontario.

Footnotes:

(1.) John K.A. O'Farrell, review of Robert Choquette's Language and Religion: A History of English-French Conflict in Ontario, in Chelsea Journal (November-December, 1977).

(2.) Sister Pascal, interview by John K.A. O'Farrell, London, Ontario, 11 March 1969.

(3.) Ibid.

(4.) Father J. Stanley Murphy, CSB (1904-1983), told the author that Bishop Fallon had confirmed him in 1916. To everyone's relief, the question-and-answer period passed without incident.

(5.) Paul Baillargeon, "Bishop Michel Francis Fallon: Founder of St. Peter's Seminary," St. Peter's Seminary, London, Ontario, Alumni Bulletin (December 1996): pp. 28-51. Although primarily devoted to Bishop Fallon's founding and building of St. Peter's Seminary, this article is quite useful for its many biographical details, its rare photographs of the bishop and his family, and its balanced judgment of Fallon's complex character and critical shortcomings.

(6.) Sir Robert Laird Borden to Joseph Fallon, 1 March 1931. Taken from a sheaf of letters located on the inside of the back cover of "The Fallon Scrapbook." This "Scrapbook" belonged to the Estate of the late John K.A. O'Farrell.

(7.) Quoted in John K.A. Farrell [O'Farrell], "Michael Francis Fallon, Bishop of London, Ontario, Canada: The Man and his Controversies," Canadian Catholic Historical Association [hereafter CCHA], Study Sessions (1968), p. 79.

(8.) T.R. Elliott, "An Imperialist Irishman," MacLean's Magazine, 1 October 1929, pp. 10-11.

(9.) Referred to in Farrell, "Michael Francis Fallon," p. 80, fn. 8, The Border City Star, 23 February 1931. Monsignor A.P. Mahoney recalled that Fallon followed Henri Bourassa to the podium on this occasion. See Monsignor Andrew Parnell Mahoney, interview by John K.A. O'Farrell, London, Ontario, 6 August 1968. However, another person thought that Fallon and Bourassa spoke at an annual St. Andrew's Society dinner in London. See "Fallon, Michael Francis (1867-1931)," A Standard Dictionary of Canadian Biography, The Canadian Who is Who [1875-1933] (Toronto: Trans-Canada Press, 1934), 1: 185.

(10.) Arthur C. Carty, interview by John K.A. O'Farrell, London, Ontario, 28 February 1969; ibid., "Bishop Fallon and the Irish Question," 13 August 1972. This three-page unpublished paper was written in response to a request from Bishop (now Cardinal) G. Emmett Carter and belonged to the Estate of John K.A. O'Farrell.

(11.) "Bishop Fallon's Condemnation." See "Fallon Scrapbook," p. 122.

(12.) The Border City Star (Windsor), 23 February 1931, p. 12.

(13.) "A University for English-speaking Catholics?" Union (Ottawa). See "Fallon Scrapbook," 36.

(14.) Jack Cecillon, "Turbulent Times in the Diocese of London: Bishop Fallon and the French-Language Controversy, 1910-18,' Ontario History, p. 87, no. 4 (December 1995): p. 371.

(15.) Referred to in Farrell, "Michael Francis Fallon," p. 83, fn. 13, Ottawa Evening Journal, 17 February 1899.

(16.) Robert Choquette, Language and Religion: A History of English-French Conflict in Ontario (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1975), pp. 14-15.

(17.) For an in-depth look at Fallon's nomination to London, see Pasquale Fiorino, "The Nomination of Michael Fallon as Bishop of London," CCHA, 62 (1996): 33-46.

(18.) Referred to in Farrell, 'Michael Francis Fallon," p. 86, fn. 19, The Globe, 12 October 1910.

(19.) Ibid., fn. 20, The Ottawa Citizen, 17 October 1910. See also C.B. Sissons, Bi-Lingual Schools in Canada (Toronto: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1917): pp. 73-79; Margaret Prang, "Clerics, Politicians, and the Bilingual Schools Issue in Ontario, 1910-1917," Canadian Historical Review, p. 41, no. 4 (December 1960): 281-307.

(20.) See F.W. Merchant, Report on the Condition of English-French Schools in the Province of Ontario (Toronto: King's Printer, 1912).

(21.) For the only in-depth version ever published about the diocesan tribunal, see Choquette, Language and Religion, pp. 141-49.

(22.) Choquette, Language and Religion, p. 138.

(23.) Cecillon, "Turbulent Times in the Diocese of London," p. 377.

(24.) Choquette, Language and Religion, p. 149, fn. 63.

(25.) See Michael Power, "Bishop Fallon and the Riot at Ford City, 8 September 1917," Essex County Historical Society, Occasional Paper No. 3 (1986).

(26.) Monsignor Andrew Parnell Mahoney, interview by John K.A. O'Farrell, London, Ontario, 30 August 1969.

(27.) Dr. Patricia Skidmore, Brescia College, University of Western Ontario, telephone interview by Michael Power, 3 December 1999.

(28.) For a detailed description of this dispute, see Michael Power, "Fallon versus Forster: The Struggle Over Assumption College," CCHA Historical Studies, 56 (1989): pp. 49-66.

(29.) I am referring primarily to Robert Choquette's Language and Religion.

(30.) Vandoos is an English nickname for the Royal 22nd Regiment, which provided battalion during the First World War and is still a regiment in the Canadian Army. Fallon kept a diary of his trip, "Diary of Visit to Canadian Army in England and France at the Request of the Canadian Government." See also "Kept bishop's secret: Bishop Fallon's visit to First World War front revealed by newsman," London Free Press, 20 September 1969, p. 29.

(31.) Larry Lewis, London, Ontario, telephone interview by Michael Power, 6 December 1999. Lewis first heard this from the late Helen Jones.

(32.) John K.A. Farrell [O'Farrell], "The History of the Roman Catholic Church in London, Ontario, 1826-1931" (Master's thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1949), pp. 132-33. The controversy, which took place in pulpit and press, occurred in the early months of 1919.

(33.) Ibid., p. 133.

(34.) Globe, 11 February 1922, pp. 1-2.

(35.) Sister Pascal interview.

(36.) Baillargeon, "Bishop Michael Francis Fallon: Founder of St. Peter's Seminary," p. 49.

(37.) "Fallon, Michael Francis (1867-1931)," p. 186.