Two active Canadian bishops die (Canada).

St. Boniface--Following our report in the May edition ("Changes in the Canadian episcopate", p. 35), two more bishops have died, Archbishop Antoine Hacault of St. Boniface, MB, and Bishop Thomas Lobsinger of Whitehorse, YK.

Archbishop Hacault, 74, was the last still active Canadian bishop to have attended the Second Vatican Council. He was consecrated an auxiliary bishop in 1964. As Archbishop of the francophone diocese of St. Boniface (1972), he devoted much of his work to dialogue and reconciliation among the Christian churches. He was well liked.

The Bishop of Whitehorse, Thomas Joseph Lobsinger, 72, was killed April 15 when the small plane he was piloting crashed on the frozen waters of Fox Lake, 65 km north of Whitehorse. The bishop, accompanied by Brother Hubert Spruyt, OMI, was enroute from Whitehorse to Dawson City to say Mass when his plane flew into a snow squall, forcing an attempted emergency landing. The bishop was an experienced pilot.

Bishop Lobsinger, born in Brantford, ON, in 1927, had been a scholarship student at St. Michael's College, Toronto. He joined the Order of Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) and was ordained in 1954. Much of his priest-hood was spent in British Columbia, where he became head of the Order before being consecrated bishop in 1987. As a parish priest in B.C., working mainly on native reserves, he learned to fly in order to visit missions in remote parts of the province. Popular among the people and a devotee of pastoral work, Bishop Lobsinger made a formal apology some years ago on behalf of the Church to aboriginal people who had suffered abuse in the province s residential schools.