Father Pandosy

Jean-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Félix Pandosy (22 November 1824 – February 1891), commonly known as Father Pandosy, was a French Catholic priest who was the first settler in the Kelowna area in British Columbia. He set up a church and a school and attracted many settlers to the area. He founded the Okanagan Mission which was the first permanent white settlement in the British Columbia Interior aside from the forts for the Hudson's Bay Company and the gold rush boomtowns of the Fraser Canyon.

Background

Father Pandosy was born on 22 November 1824 in Marseille, France, to Esprit-Étienne-Charles-Henri Pandosy, a sea captain, and Marguerite-Josephine-Marie Dallest. He was educated at Collège de Bourbon in Arles. He then decided to enter the Oblate Juniorate of Notre-Dame de Lumières. On 14 August 1844, he entered the novitiate of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.) at Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier and took his vows one year and one day later, on 15 August 1845. After that, he studied philosophy and theology at the seminary in Marseille.

Towards the end of 1846, Eugène de Mazenod, the founder of the O.M.I., granted the request of two Pacific Northwest bishops (Augustin-Magloire Blanchet of Walla Walla, Washington and Modeste Demers of Vancouver Island) to send Oblate missionaries from France to serve in their dioceses. Pandosy and 4 other men (one ordained priest, three scholastics, of which Pandosy was one, and one lay brother) left Le Havre on 4 February 1847 when Pandosy was 23 years old. They arrived in New York on 2 April 1847, met Bishop Blanchet in St. Louis and reached Kansas City on 1 May 1847. They then joined a caravan going to Fort Hall in what is now southeastern Idaho. When the party arrived at Fort Hall the Bishop and a few companions went ahead to prepare lodgings and provisions for the winter. Father Pandosy remained with the wagons in Fort Hall and finally arrived in Walla Walla on 5 October 1847, eight months after he had set out from France. the first place of worship and the first school in the Southern Interior. Louis d'Herbomez built mission with him in 1847, in Washington near Yakima, which was named Sainte Croix. Location was main summer camp for Chief Kamiakin

Death

In February 1891, Father Pandosy was called to Keremeos. He was 67 years old and in tentative health. Returning from Keremeos, he made it as far as Penticton and was very ill. Chief Françoise of the Penticton Indian Band noticed Father Pandosy's illness and took him in. Thomas Ellis' wife was called because of her nursing skills. Little could be done for Father Pandosy and he died on February 6, 1891. His body was sent back to Okanagan Mission on the steamer Penticton. He was buried across the street from the site he founded.

Legacy

In 1896, Okanagan Mission was sold to Father Eumelin. Father Eumelin ran the Mission until 1902. Father Pandosy's Mission closed in 1902 and the land was purchased by the Kelowna Land and Orchard Company. Father Pandosy's Mission had been a place of worship for forty-four years. 1947 saw the property sold again and it was slated for demolition but a group of volunteers rescued and restored the three original buildings on the site. Father Pandosy's original sawn wood church was sold to a local congregation and they moved the church to their site in Rutland where it was later destroyed by fire. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate bought the two acres that held the original buildings in 1954. In 1983, the site was designated as a B.C. Heritage Site. Father Pandosy's Mission is now four acres and other historic buildings have been put on site.