20 miles west of Smithers
This site, once the largest village of the Bulkley Valley Indians, later was named after the pioneer missionary Father Morice. Salmon, staple food of the Indian, concentrated in the canyon and were caught with basketry traps, dip-nets and harpoons. Indians still catch salmon with long gaff hooks and smoke them at this fishery.
Moricetown is located at a place where the Bulkely River squeezes thgrough a narrow gorge. It is a traditional dip net fishing place for the Wet'suwet'en who have lived in the area for at least 5,000 years.
Moricetown is named for Adrien-Gabriel Morice who was born in 1859 and raised in France. He joined the order of Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) and in 1880 was sent to BC as a missionary. He lived in New Westminster for two years where he was ordained a priest. He then went to St. Joseph’s School at Williams Lake for three years to work among the Chilcotin. He learned several Chilcotin dialects because he believed religion should be taught in the vernacular language. In 1885 Morice was sent to Fort St. James on Stuart Lake to work among the Dakelh (also called Carrier) First Nations. He remained there for nineteen years.
Father Morice learned the Dakelh language and became the only missionary to speak it fluently. Within a few months of his arrival he adapted the Cree syllabics to create a writing system for Dakelh. From 1891-1894 he published a bi-monthly Dakelh-language newspaper called Dustl'us Nawhulnuk. He also translated many religious texts, prayers and hymns. Father Morice is credited as the first person to recognize all of the phonological distinctions in an Athabascan language and to write it accurately. His major achievement was a two-volume work, The Carrier Language: A Grammar and Dictionary.
Father Morice was the subject of complaints by the factor of the Hudson's Bay Company and he did not get along with the bishop or other priests. He left the mission field and worked in Kamloops, then moved to Manitoba where he became the first editor of the French-language newspaper, Le Patriote de l’Ouest at Duck Lake, Saskatchewan. In his later years he lived in Winipeg where he devoted his life to writing and study of Dakelh language and culture, more general Athabaskan topics, a history of the Roman Catholic church in Western Canada, the history of the French and Metis of the West and other topics. Father Morice died at Saint Boniface in 1938.
Resources:
A. G. Morice, The History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia, Interior Stationary, Smithers, 1978.
A general website about Dakelh/Carier syllabics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_syllabary
Academic website about Morice's Dakelh/Carrier syllabics:
http://www.sfu.ca/nwjl/Articles/V002_N04/PoserLatinHymns.pdf
