Rose Prince



Rose Prince (or Rose of the Carrier) was a Dakelh woman who has become the subject of a Catholic pilgrimage.

Biography
Rose Prince was born in Fort St. James in 1915, the third of nine children belonging to Jean-Marie and Agathe Prince. Jean-Marie was descended from the great chief Kwah, while Agathe had been raised in Williams Lake by the Sisters of the Child Jesus. When the Lejac Residential School was built in 1922, Rose was sent there along with the other children from her school, as part of the Canadian residential school system.

When Prince was 16, still attending school at Lejac, her mother and two youngest sisters died from an influenza outbreak. Devastated, she opted not to return home for the summers, but to stay on at the school instead. After graduation, she stayed on at the school, completing chores such as mending, cleaning, embroidering and sewing.

Perfectly preserved
At some point, Prince contracted tuberculosis, and by the age of 34 she was confined to bed. On August 19, 1939, she was admitted to the hospital and died the same day. After her burial, she lay undisturbed for two years. In 1951, however, a number of graves were moved from the west side of the school to a larger nearby cemetery, and during the move, Rose Prince's casket broke open. It is claimed that, to the astonishment of the workers, Prince's body and clothing had not decayed, despite the years that had passed since her death. Other bodies examined all showed signs of decay, even those who had died after Prince.

Pilgrimage
Decades later, Father Jules Goulet, called for a pilgrimage to Lejac. Although only 20 people gathered the first year (1990), awareness has grown dramatically through passing years. In 1995, 1200 people made the trip to Lejac, coming from the region and even other provinces. Father Goulet's prayers and anointments at the site have even been claimed to heal the chronically injured.