Charles Garnier

Charles Garnier, (; May 25, 1606 – December 7, 1649) was a Jesuit missionary working in New France. He was killed by Iroquois in a Petun (Tobacco Nation) village on December 7, 1649.

Biography The son of a secretary to King Henri III of France, Garnier was born in Paris in 1606. He attended the Collège de Clermont in Paris and joined the Jesuit seminary in Clermont in September 1624.

After his novitiate, he returned to the College of Clermont as Prefect. After finishing his studies in rhetoric and philosophy, he spent two years teaching at the College of Eu as a teacher. Completing years of studies in language, culture, and theology, he was ordained as a priest in 1635. Initially forbidden by his father from travelling to Canada, where he would face almost certain death as a missionary, he was eventually allowed to go. Embarking on March 25, 1636, he described the crossing in a letter to his father,

We gave Viaticum to a sailor who had fallen from the top of the mizzenmast to the deck. He was well-disposed to die. However, as I saw him in great discomfort, unable to sleep, I gave him my cabin and went in with Father Chastelain in his, but the sick man found this cabin too stuffy so the next day I occupied it again but left him my mattress so he could sleep even in the midst of the cannons. Hearing this, the Captain made me take one of his. By early August, he had arrived among the Nipissings.

Garnier was canonized in 1930 by Pope Pius XI with the seven other Canadian Martyrs (also known as the North American Martyrs). His feast day is October 19.