Administrator and educator; born Grenville, Quebec, 2 June 1878, son of Auguste Filion and Margaret Milway; died Midland, Ontario, 10 October 1962.John Milway Filion is unique in the history of Canadian Jesuits in having held the office of Provincial Superior in both the mainly French-speaking Province of Canada and in the English-speaking Vice-Province of Upper Canada. He took office as Provincial of Canada 1 July 1918 and held it until the division of the Province, 27 June 1924, when he was appointed Provincial of the new Vice-Province. He held that office until 17 May 1928.
Filion was brought up in a prosperous and bicultural family of ten children in a small Irish settlement in the lower Ottawa Valley, and after early schooling there followed eight years of the cours classique both at Collège Ste-Thérèse, near Montreal, 1891-97 and at Collège Ste-Marie in Montreal, 1897-99. He entered the Society of Jesus at Sault-au-Récollet, Montreal, 1 February 1900. After his spiritual training there, he studied classics at the College of St. Andrew-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 1902-03, philosophy at Immaculée-Conception, Montreal, 1904-07, theology at St. Beuno's College, Wales, 1912-16, and spiritual theology at Hales Place, Canterbury, England 1916-17. He taught Latin to the early grades at Loyola College, Montreal, 1903-04, and English literature at St. Boniface College, Manitoba, 1907-12. He was ordained by Archbishop William Cloynes in the Jesuit chapel at Milltown Park, Dublin, Ireland, 31 July 1915.
In the fall of 1917 Fr. Filion was appointed to Loyola College as professor of logic and Minister to the Jesuit community, which was then moving into new, but unfinished, quarters in the Administration Building. "It was Loyola's worst year of penury", he would later recall, describing "burst water pipes, leaking roofs, and disintegrating terra cotta" where construction had been abandoned for lack of funds. When on 1 March 1918 the Rector, Alexander Gagnieur, became seriously ill, Filion was appointed in his stead. With his characteristic energy and optimism, he encouraged the others, and spurred the "Old Boys" to prepare a fund-raising drive, which in fact began a year later under the direction of his successor, William Hingston, SJ. Then, early in June, at the unprecedented young age of forty and with a bare three months experience as a superior, he learned that he was the choice of the special Visitor, William Power, to be appointed Provincial.
The years of the Great War were particularly turbulent in the relations between French-and English-speaking Canadians. The Conscription Crisis in 1917 brought to violent culmination in Quebec conflicts over language and religion that had been raging in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan for several decades. The Jesuit Province of Canada, which numbered some 100 Anglophones to 350 French-Canadians, became particularly tense, as did each one of its institutions dispensing bilingual programs: Collège Sacré-Coeur, Sudbury, Ontario, Collège de St-Boniface, and Collège St-François-Xavier, Edmonton. Many proposals were in the air, including a plan for the Anglophone Jesuits to be attached to the Provinces of Ireland or England. Instead, the perfectly bilingual Filion was appointed as Provincial Superior. He was too young to have been part of any dispute, and had, in fact, been out of the country since 1912. His mandate, expressed very clearly by the General of the Jesuits, Wlodomir Ledochowski, was to use "the utmost care and solicitude ... to try to enter into the feelings of each side."
Filion's years as Provincial were dominated by two principal issues, the division of the Jesuit Province and the promotion of the cause for beatification of the Canadian Martyrs. By 1923 equitable arrangements were in place for the former. A Provincial Congregation of thirty-eight delegates meeting at Immaculée-Conception under Filion's chairmanship, 23-26 June, petitioned the General to proceed. The division was accordingly decreed for 27 June 1924.
Filion had an admiration for the Jesuit Martyrs of New France since his boyhood on that river of the missionaries, the Ottawa. As their cause progressed, especially after 1916, he became fervent in its promotion. As Provincial he could see that it was an issue beyond linguistic quarrels and he made it a priority. He encouraged pilgrimages to Martyrs' Hill, near Waubaushene, Ontario, which had been identified by Arthur Jones, SJ., as the actual site of the death of Brébeuf and Lalement. He also ne- gotiated agreements both with the Hôtel-Dieu nuns in Quebec City for an "amicable sharing" of the relics of the Martyrs which had been given into their custody in 1800, and through the good offices of the Hon. William Finlayson, the Ontario Minister of Lands and Forests, with the owners of the ruins of Ste-Marie near Midland, Ontario, and of the land adjacent to them. Discussions for acquiring Ste-Marie would drag on until 1940, and disputes had already arisen about the shrine at Martyrs' Hill. However, by 1925 Filion had bought enough property around the ruins to situate a major shrine on the hill overlooking Ste-Marie. He knew this site was easier of access than Waubaushene, and that its authenticity, both historically and religiously, was unchallenged.
Although Provincial, Filion himself actually became the architect of the new shrine, the engineer, and even the foreman of the construction. In October 1925 he secured a bank loan for $20,000.00, hired some fifty labourers who usually worked on the Great Lakes boats during the summer, and begged some 75,000 board feet of wood from lumber companies as well as discarded fixtures from the Paulists' church in Toronto and the cathedral in London, Ontario, both then coincidentally undergoing renovations. By 1 December the roof was in place, and by May 1926 the stonemasons had begun to install the Longford limestone facing Filion had bought, thanks to funds given by generous donors. On the first anniversary of the Martyrs' beatification, 25 June 1926, Cardinal O'Connell of Boston blessed the new shrine, and on the following day it was solemnly inaugurated by seven Canadian bishops led by Archbishop McNeil of Toronto. Filion never lost his love for the Martyrs' Shrine, and returned there for ministry every year during the summer until the end of his life.
In the autumn of 1923 Filion spent four months in Rome. He was there as Provincial of Canada for the Twenty-seventh General Congregation of the Jesuit Order, called extraordinarily to adapt the Society's Constitutions to the new code of Canon Law. His responsibility at that Congregation was to work especially on decrees dealing with administration. But in addition he used this time to forward three other matters. One was the final arrangement for the division of the Province. The second was the beati- fication of the Martyrs. There was much lobbying to do for their cause to be given preference, especially during the "Holy Year" planned for 1925, and in the context where there were several other Jesuit and many more French causes. His decision to promote the Jesuit Martyrs of New France officially as "Canadian Martyrs" is credited as having been decisive in winning over the Vatican authorities.
The third matter was the question of university status for Loyola College. In 1919 the Montreal faculties of Laval University became fully independent as the new Université de Montréal, with a mandate from Rome and from the government of Quebec to establish uniformity in the program of the classical colleges of the area. Since 1899, however, a papal Constitution, Jamdudum, had given Collège Ste-Marie, and later Loyola College, privileges guaranteeing their academic autonomy. Filion, fearing that these privileges might now be endangered, intervened to strengthen the Jesuits' position. In 1920 the provisions of Jamdudum were confirmed by the Vatican, and in December 1922 accepted by the new university. For Loyola College, however, he agreed that because of the special needs of English-speaking Catholics, negotiations should continue towards university status. These he actively and sincerely pursued in Rome during the fall of 1923, but came to realize that opposition from bishops in Quebec was very strong. He accordingly agreed that the plan for Loyola should be withdrawn. A year later the Rector of Loyola, William Hingston, travelled to Rome to appeal this decision. But Filion's counsel prevailed.
This same cautious prudence governed most of his choices during the four years he was Provincial of the Upper Canadian Vice-Province. He decided to staff and strengthen Loyola and to accept the administration of Campion College, Regina, but he steadily refused invitations to open other colleges in Edmonton, North Bay, Toronto,Vancouver, Victoria and Winnipeg.
At the end of his ten years as Provincial, Filion began what would become a thirty-year career as a college professor of philosophy and religion. He served at Campion College, 1928-32 and 1935-40, at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, 1940-47, and at Loyola College, 1947-60. His students remember him as a careful and meticulous lecturer, a refined figure who always seemed to be perfectly balanced in his views. He was a tall man with delicate features and a very distinguished bearing. He had an air of prayerful serenity about him that obviously proceeded from a strong, self-disciplined habit of daily meditation. Early in his years of study he had accidentally lost the two middle fingers of his right hand -- as Provincial he made a regulation forbidding the use of buzz-saws to Jesuit students -- and taken the habit of always carrying his breviary or another book that concealed the disfiguring flaw. This gave him an added air of piety and scholarly learning.
Filion's service as a professor was interrupted twice, once when he was appointed chaplain to hospitals in Winnipeg, 1932-34, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, 1934-35; and again in 1958-59 when he became chaplain to a Benedictine convent in Longford, B.C. He was highly respected in these roles, as he was throughout his life as a counsellor and spiritual director. Some seem to have found him rigid in his spiritual approach, but none ever questioned his generosity, gentleness and kindness.
In 1960, he retired to St. Stanislaus Novitiate, Guelph, to serve as a confessor, but a year later left there to help open in Ottawa a new apostolic house, Ogilvie Residence, which had been offered to the Jesuits by a friend of his. He also continued to work every summer and early fall, as he had done all his life, at Martyrs' Shrine. He died there of a sudden heart attack.