The colourful life of Canada’s Johnny Appleseed

BCCN’s series of faith profiles marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the province continues, with the story of one of the province’s more colourful missionaries. Taken from Canada: Portraits of Faith (Reel to Real), edited by Michael Clarke.

BC Christian News October 2008

By Ted Gerk

OLD-TIMERS in the Okanagan who knew him well remembered Father Charles Pandosy as a huge, powerfully built man, capable of amazing feats of strength, with a big booming voice and a ready wit.

Although a deeply religious Oblate missionary, Pandosy was also known to settle an argument by challenging his opponent to a fistfight. Today, Pandosy is best remembered as Canada’s Johnny Appleseed.

Charles John Felix Adolph Pandosy was born in Marseilles, France, in 1824 to Marguerite Josephine Marie Dallest and Etienne Charles Henry Pandosy.

His father was a navy captain and a landowner and was thus able to provide comfortable living conditions and a good education for his family It was his father’s navy career that drew Pandosy to the adventure of distant ports.

As a step in this direction, while attending the Bourbon College at Aries, France, Pandosy decided to enter the Oblate Juniorate of Lumineres, a seminary for men seeking ordination into the Oblate Order of priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church. He took his final religious vows in 1845.

Bishop de Mazenod, founder of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, provided him with an inspiring admonition: “There are in this world but two loves: the love of God extending to the contempt of self; and the love of self extending to the contempt of God. All other loves are but degrees between these two extremes. Do not fear, you obey the One who rules the world.”

This wisdom would guide Pandosy’s missionary endeavours in the Pacific Northwest for more than four decades. In February 1847, the 23 year old Pandosy and four others were sent from France to the mission fields of the Oregon Territory.

It was an arduous eight-month journey, culminating in their arrival at Fort Walla Walla. Here, the men began to fulfill the objective of their journey: the evangelization of the Yakima Indians.

Pandosy and the others quickly discovered the violence of the region. On November 29, 1847, the Marcus Whitman Massacre took place, in which several Cayuse Indians killed 13 people and took more than 40 hostages. In February 1848, American troops were dispatched, and the Cayuse War began. The war was to last two-and a half years.

Motivated by these perilous events, Pandosy’s superiors allowed for early ordination. Pandosy and a colleague officially entered the Oblate Order in early January 1848, the first priests ordained in what was to become Washington State. Pandosy altered his name at this point to Charles Marie Pandosy.

The missionaries not only cared for the spiritual needs of the natives, they also served as translators and as peacekeepers. Pandosy and his co-workers managed to keep the Yakimas from entering the war. Pandosy became fluent in the Yakima language and eventually compiled its first dictionary. He later acted as a mediator and an interpreter between the Yakimas and the white man while continuing his missionary work among the Indians and serving as an army chaplain.

In March 1859, war flared between the U.S. Army and the Spokane and Yakima Indians, and the Oblates made the difficult decision to close their missions among the Yakimas and the Cayuses.

In summer 1859, Pandosy was sent to the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, where he established a mission known as L’Anse au Sable, the Cove of Sand, in an area that is now the City of Kelowna. Pandosy quickly recognized the agricultural potential of the Okanagan’s temperate setting and planted its first apple trees, encouraging new settlers to do the same.

A friend of Pandosy wrote: “The first trees planted by the missionary produced a beautiful apple, deep red, shaped like a Delicious – a good winter apple.” Pandosy’s orchards eventually established the Okanagan Valley as one of Canada’s chief fruit-growing areas.

Pandosy was a devout pastor who also served his flock as doctor; teacher; lawyer; orator; botanist; agriculturist; musician (he played the French horn); voice instructor; and sports coach. He fast became known as a troubleshooter, a peacemaker, a defender of justice, a champion of the underdog – and, above all else, a great humanitarian.

But Pandosy was not your typical priest. Once, when his young Indian interpreter and guide gambled away Pandosy’s brand new saddle, Pandosy immediately challenged him to a fight.

Love and respect for his priest kept the native man’s hands down by his side, causing Pandosy to grab the culprit by the scruff of the neck and demand that he put up his fists and defend himself. Pandosy, however, tripped on his cassock, allowing his opponent to jump on top of him.

Those who observed the spectacle were surprised at Pandosy’s unpriestly behaviour. Dusting himself off, Pandosy thundered: “I’m not mad at him, I’m mad about the saddle.”

Pandosy, who experienced other missions throughout British Columbia ­– Esquimalt, Fort Rupert, Fort St. James, the lower Fraser, Stuart Lake, Mission City and New Westminster – was among those who believed that Indians and their culture should be respected, and that the ways of the white man were largely responsible for the indifference that many Indians displayed toward Christianity.

He wrote to a superior in the 1850s: “But I shiver, Reverend Father, when I think of the miserable state of the Savages, as I cannot delude myself, at least in the country where we live, the Savages around us are what the Whites have made them and what we have let them become instead of working hard and generously to make them otherwise with the help of the grace of God.”

On February 6, 1891, Father Pandosy died near Penticton, after a pastoral visit during cold weather to Keremeos. His body was brought to the mission that he had founded on the site of present-day Kelowna, and lovingly laid to rest.

Pandosy influenced whites and natives alike and saved the lives of thousands during the various wars between natives and settlers. He taught that two cultures and two worlds could live together peacefully based on mutual trust and respect.

Pandosy’s life of faith and sacrifice are evidenced by the missions he founded and so diligently served. On his own behalf he said, “I expend myself and over this is spent God’s grace.”

Ted Gerk is director of operations at Heritage Christian Online School in Kelowna.

Note: This was a fun article to do for my friend Michael Clarke. We even manged to track down a little viewed updated photograph of Pandosy. Thought I would share ut with you.