A Period of Transition 113

The temperance movement was totally reorganized in 1878. The clergy was aware that alcohol abuse still constituted a very destructive factor in society. Consequently, Bishop Peter MacIntyre sent all the parishes a pastoral letter in which he urged his priests to fight harder against this social calamity:

Redouble your labours in the cause of Temperance, for you well know that drunkenness is one of the besetting sins of our time. Bring the spiritual and temporal evils of this vice before the minds of your people, and exhort them to sobriety in honour of the sacred thirst of our Saviour on the Cross.”®

The bishop asked priests and laymen to organize societies for total abstinence in their parishes. To facilitate the co-ordination of the movement, he established a central council of which Father Ronald B. MacDonald, the parish priest in Miscouche, became president. An excellent propagandist, Father MacDonald travelled from one parish to another promoting the organization and accepting pledges of total abstinence from new members. According to the Moniteur Acadien, the Acadian parishes were among the first to join the movement:

We note with great pleasure and a true feeling of pride that our compatriots were among the first to respond to the call of their chief Pastor. Moved by the havoc wreaked on populations by drunkenness, that canker of society, Acadian parishes have resolved to stem the curse of our time. (TR)”°

The propaganda campaign proved to be very effective since most men embraced the cause: 230 in Bloomfield, 330 in Egmont Bay, and 204 in Mont Carmel*°. To become a member of the Society, you had to take an oath of total abstinence from intoxicating drinks and prom- ise to recite one “Our Father” and two “Hail Marys” to ask for perse- verance. Each local society had a vigilance committee that watched over the members and fined them 20 cents whenever they were caught consuming alcohol. Finally, a member would risk being ex- pelled from the organization if he broke his pledge several times”’.

By 1860 most of the parish temperance societies had been trans- formed in order to join the ranks of the League of the Cross, a new worldwide temperance movement’. These organizations were still engaged in essentially cultural and educational activities. As was the case in Rustico, most of them became “Good Death Societies” (TR)