“La Cène”

Painting by Dominique Beauregard from the exhibition « Les Stations du curé Labelle »

This version of La Cène [the Last Supper], recalling Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, is set in Labelle’s presbytery, famous as a hub of colonization activity.

The colonizing missionary had an undeniable talent for bringing people together. He managed to get a surprisingly contrasting group of “disciples of colonization,” including influential figures of the day, settlers, loggers, merchants, clergymen, and politicians of all stripes, to sit down together. Regardless of their titles and beliefs, what really mattered to Labelle was each man’s talents. He knew how to get the best out of his allies by teaming them up in sometimes daring ways, always with a view to helping his project along. A staunch Catholic, he himself became good friends with Arthur Buies, who was well known for his anticlerical views and dreaded by the clergy, as well as with the Protestant merchant William Scott, at a time of heightened interreligious rivalry.