BULTEAU, GUILLAUME, Recollet priest; b. 1666, made his profession in the ecclesiastical province of Saint-André (province of Flanders) in 1689; d. 9 Nov. 1716 at Quebec.

From 1694 on Father Bulteau was at the convent in Montreal. During the night of 23–24 Feb. 1695, together with his superior, Father Joseph Denys, and another Recollet, he went to the aid of the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu, whose establishment was destroyed by fire. That year he supplied for the parish priest of Trois-Rivières, Luc Filiastre, during his absence, and registered acts on 17 and 25 September and again on 6 October. Two years later he was listed in the census as a missionary at Contrecœur, and in 1699 he was at Varennes.

In 1700 Father Bulteau succeeded Father Filiastre as superior of the Recollets of Montreal. Later that year, from 3 to 8 September, it was in his capacity as superior that he attended the general assembly of First Nations held in Montreal. The meeting prioved to be a decisive step towards the great peace treaty that was concluded in 1701. Along with the superiors of the Sulpicians and Jesuits, Father Bulteau signed the assembly’s official report, after the Chevalier de Callière, Bochart de Champigny, Rigaud de Vaudreuil, and several other prominent individuals.

On 16 Oct. 1701, at Varennes, he baptized Marie-Marguerite Dufrost* de Lajemmerais, the future Madame d’Youville, foundress of the Grey Nuns. In 1705, while residing in Quebec, Father Bulteau was spurred by an understandable zeal to entrust an illegitimate child to Maurice Déry, a settler at Charlesbourg. The father, known only to Bulteau, was to pay Déry 50 livres annually to the adoptive father, but in the first year only half was paid. On several occasions he reminded the Recollet that he already had several mouths to feed. After being patient for four years, on 15 Dec. 1709 Déry was authorized by an ordinance from Jacques Raudot to have Bulteau summoned before Pierre Raimbault, the intendant’s subdelegate in Montreal, and to demand the name of the child’s father, so that he could claim what was due him.

In 1712 Father Bulteau was again the superior in Montreal, at the time when the syndic for the Recollets, Jean Soumande, ratified in their name a contract with the master mason Pierre Janson, dit Lapalme, by which he undertook to build the portal of the Recollets’ church for 1,800 livres.

On 6 Nov. 1716, some days before his death, Father Bulteau, who had returned to Quebec, signed, in his capacity as former guardian of the convent in Montreal, a petition dealing with responsibilities. This petition was addressed by five Recollets of the Canadian mission to the provincial and the definitors of the province of Saint-Denis. The next day the same Recollets signed another petition addressed to M. de Vaudreuil, asking him to support their suggestions to the provincial. Two days later Father Bulteau died, after 22 years of apostolate work in Canada.

Jacques Valois