Saintly priest ministered to First Nations people

Fr. Levaque was in his element when caring for others

Fr. Yvon Levaque

By GLEN ARGAN
Western Catholic Reporter
St. Albert

Father Yvon Levaque was a saintly man who served the poor and had a deep devotion to the Eucharist and the Virgin Mary.

The Oblate priest, who was awarded the Order of Canada and who fed sandwiches to Edmonton’s inner city poor until he was 90, died Oct. 27. He was 93.

His friend Therese Swityk recalls visiting Levaque at Foyer Lacombe, an Oblate retirement home, when a poor man with no mitts came to the door in mid-winter. The priest did not hesitate to give the man his own mitts.

“That’s the kind of man he was,” said Swityk.

“The needs of the poor were always ahead of his own needs,” said another friend, Oblate Father Louis-Philippe Roy. “For a man who was physically strong, he became very soft before the needs of the poor person.”

Born in 1915 in St-Eugene, Ont., Levaque made his first vows as an Oblate of Mary Immaculate in 1935 and was ordained a priest in 1940.

He told the WCR in a 2005 interview at the time of his 90th birthday that he joined the Oblates after reading books about the order’s missions in the North. “I wanted to go and evangelize the Indians.”

In 1950, he started a six-year stint as a chaplain for the Royal Canadian Air Force, serving for a period overseas during the Korean War.

But his main ministry was with First Nations people. He served 10 years as a missionary to the Slavey and Beaver people in Fort Nelson, B.C., was administrator of a residential school in Cardston, and was executive director of the Oblate Indian-Eskimo Council in Ottawa.

Because of that work, Levaque was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 1987.

Semi-retired in Aylmer, Quebec, after 1976, he took part in the 1992 Alaska Challenge Snowmobile Safari, a two-week, 1,750-km epic snowmobile race across the Arctic.

Soup kitchen

In 1988, he retired to Edmonton where he immediately began running the Friday soup kitchen at the Bissell Centre.

“Helping people is what keeps me alive,” he told the WCR. “I see the figure of Christ in each one of them. I see a hungry Christ; I see a Christ in need.”

Shortly after that interview, Levaque retired from the ministry.

Swityk said the priest’s health went downhill. “It seemed like he had no purpose left. He had no poor people left to help.”

Father Roy said, “Father Levaque had a good devotion to the Holy Eucharist.” He was a regular at Eucharistic Adoration at Foyer Lacombe.

Devoted to Mary

Levaque also showed great reverence when celebrating Mass, he said. He prayed the rosary daily and distributed rosaries to any person who would accept one.

“He wanted people to have a devotion to Mary.”

Roy cherishes all the help Levaque gave him because of his failing eyesight. “He was a very, very charitable man in doing whatever I asked him to do.”

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