1 Jesuit Mission of the Assumption at La Pointe de Montreal

The Jesuit Mission of the Assumption at La Pointe de Montréal (Windsor) in western New France (Ontario) was established to serve the local Huron population in 1749. In 1702, French fur trader Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac (1658-1730) established Fort Pontchartrain (Detroit) on the Detroit River. Cadillac invited the Huron of Michilimackinac (Mackinaw City) to relocate to his newly established community in order to increase the French presence in the Great Lakes region. In 1728, the Jesuits established a mission in a Huron village near Pontchartrain. The Huron settlement was relocated to Bois Blanc (Boblo) Island in 1742, at the mouth of the Detroit River. In 1747, a group of Iroquois and disaffected Huron unhappy with the community’s relocation attacked the Bois Blanc mission and burned the settlement. At the same time, the French government was anxious to increase its presence on the Detroit River to defend its territory from the English and offered land on the south shore to settlers, who soon formed the community of La Petite Côte. In 1749, the Bois Blanc Jesuits were granted land and funds from the French Crown to re-establish the Huron mission. The Jesuits chose La Pointe de Montréal, near Petite Côte, for the new Mission of the Assumption. Despite the fall of New France to the British during the Seven Years War (1756-63), La Petite Côte maintained sizeable French-speaking populations. The mission became the Parish of Assumption in 1767, the oldest Roman Catholic parish west of Montreal.

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