He entered the Oblates at Lachine in 1871 and was ordained priest in 1874. He immediately worked as a curate among the lumberjacks in the vast forests of Canada. In 1874 he was sent as a missionary among the Indians of the Mackenzie, and from 1881 among those of the Athabasca. In 1891 he was appointed Apostolic Vicar of Saskatchewan, where the first large groups of settlers were arriving. Bp. P. organized the missionary activity among both whites and Indians so effectively that the Holy See established the ordinary hierarchy and erected by decree of 3 Dec. 1907 the diocese of Prince Albert, of which he became the first ordinary.
BIBL.: A. Maurice, Histoire de l'Eglise catholique dans l'Ouest canadien, du Lac Supérieur au Pacifique, Winnipeg 1928. Nicola Kowalsky