‘I will pour out my spirit and my blessings on your children. They will thrive like watered grass, like willows on a riverbank.’ 

By Bev Trach

Bev Trach is a Scarboro Lay Missionary working in Brazil. This article first appeared in the November 2009 Newsletter of the Scarboro Missionaries whose headquarters are in Scarborough, Ontario, to the immediate east of Toronto. Monsignor John Mary Fraser, a diocesan priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto, founded the Scarboro Missionaries in 1918. Some years earlier Fr Edward Galvin, who was to become one of the founders of the Columbans, traveled to China with Father Fraser. A talk that the Canadian priest gave in St Patrick’s National Seminary, Ireland, stirred the interest of a young professor there, Fr John Blowick, who became the other co-founder of the Columbans. Father Fraser was interned in the Philippines during World War II.