For over 400 years, Jesuits and their colleagues have had a presence in Canada.  Today they work coast to coast –  from Vancouver to St.John's.  In this series igNation invites you to join us as we travel across Canada stopping at cities where there are Jesuit apostolates to read personal reflections about the city and the work being done there.  Today we visit Midland, Ontario.

My Midland is what all Jesuits identify as the location of the Canadian Martyrs’ Shrine. However, that is not quite accurate.  The Shrine property is actually on the boundary line of Tay Township, across the Wye River which divides Tay from the Town of Midland.  Still, most people say Martyrs’ Shrine is in Midland.

The Martyrs’ Shrine was built in 1925 across the road from Saint Marie among the Hurons, the original home of the Jesuit missionaries from 1640-49 and where Sts. Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were buried.  The Shrine honours the 6 Jesuits and 2 laymen who were martyred in New France between 1642 and 1649.  More than 100,000 pilgrim-visitors come to this sacred place each year as well as to St. Ignace (12 Kilometers away), the site of the martyrdom of Sts. Brébeuf and Lalemant. The Shrine is open between early May and late October. 

Midland and its nearby neighbour, Penetanguishene, along with the Townships of Tay and Tiny are the Heart of Georgian Bay, a vast area north west of Barrie, Ontario, rich in history and spectacular in natural beauty in every season of the year.  Midland boasts of the largest depiction of a Jesuit, probably in the whole world.  It is a mural on the side of a grain elevator in the port of Midland, depicting St. Jean de Brébeuf in conversation with a Wendat chief.

In addition to experiencing the peace and graces of the Shrine, people find great pleasure and much to learn when visiting the beautifully reconstructed site of Ste. Marie among the Hurons and its museum, along with its neighbour, The Wye Marsh, the nearby refurbished vessel SS Keewatin that transported passengers between Port McNicoll and Port Arthur from 1907 to 1966, and Huronia Museum with its thousands of artifacts dating back to pre-contact times. 

The trails, vistas, beaches and waterways in the Heart of Georgian Bay are magnificent.  It is no wonder that tens of thousands of First Nations people made this their home for centuries prior to the arrival of Europeans.