Leon Levasseur, a former priest and Thompson’s first resident pastor at St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church in November 1960, has died in North Bay, Ontario at the age of 90

Leon Levasseur, a former Oblate priest, who was appointed Thompson’s first resident pastor for St. Lawrence Catholic Church in November 1960, died in North Bay, Ontario at Cassellholme East Nipissing District Home for the Aged Sept. 26 at the age of 90, after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. He lived in Thompson from 1960 to 1969.

Levasseur was born in scenic Matane, Québec on the Gaspé Peninsula, located on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River, 400 kilometres northeast of Québec City, but he was raised in Manitoba by his foster mother Delia Pearson following the death of his birth mother at a young age.

After graduating from the University of Ottawa, Levasseur was ordained in 1953 and spent 16 years pastoring in Northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. He arrived in the brand-new mining town of Thompson, Manitoba on Nov. 26, 1960, three days after his pastoral appointment here. In 1969, he was voluntarily laicized as he withdrew from the clerical state and married his wife Eileen, a laywoman from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Cathedral choir in The Pas, who survives him. The couple left Thompson and moved of Winnipeg in 1969. Laicization is a process which takes from a priest or other cleric the licit use of his powers, rights, and authority, rendering him for ecclesiastical purposes the equivalent of a layman, although he still remains a priest.

Levasseur, who remained a Catholic, spent the remainder of his life and career living in Winnipeg and North Bay, where he was a passionate advocate for social housing. A memorial service was celebrated for him at St. Peter the Apostle Church in North Bay Oct. 3.

He is also survived by two children, Treasa and Kelly. Treasa is a noted rhythm and blues/folk artist who kicked off the second Home Routes concert series season here on Oct. 3, 2010.Treasa was born in Winnipeg, raised in North Bay and now lives in Toronto.

Father Levasseur, as he then was, had many irons in the fire when it came to civic involvement in Thompson’s early days. As chair of the Thompson Religious Council’ s organizing committee, he was in charge of an Oct. 15, 1967 survey the council took upon itself most years during the 1960s to conduct its own door-to-door survey of religious denominational affiliation in Thompson.

A year earlier in 1966, Levasseur had chaired the “Thompson Interested Voters Committee,” which drummed up enthusiasm for the first municipal election here, capped off by an all-candidates forum at the old Brad Theatre on Selkirk Avenue, as the townsite transitioned from being governed by the Local Government District (LGD) of Mystery Lake, to status as a town with an elected council.

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Back to the Future Part II released on Nov. 22, 1989 – 25 years ago

Back to the Future Part II was a long time in the past. Back in 1989 when the movie was released, I had just moved to North Carolina, but previously I had been making the trek a couple of times a year from Peterborough, Ontario, across the 40-mile stretch of Green Mountains between Bennington and Brattleboro, Vermont, not far south of Fletcher Schoolhouse Road in Woodstock and Lottery Hill Farm, the 1817 brick Federal main house and 121-acre horse farm (said to have been paid for originally using the winnings from the Louisiana lottery, hence the name, Lottery Hill Farm) and purchased by Canadian actor Michael J. Fox, and his wife, actress Tracy Pollan, in 1988 (they no longer own it), as I made my way to Peterborough, New Hampshire. Fox was 28 years old when Back to the Future Part II  was released, but only two years away from being diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease when he noticed a “twitch” in his left little finger while he was working on the set of the 1991 film Doc Hollywood.

In Back to the Future Part II, Fox again plays Marty McFly, as he did in the original Back to the Future movie, released in July 1985, both directed by Robert Zemeckis, a Catholic filmmaker from Chicago, known for his special effects work, going forward in time from the  present (Oct. 26, 1985), to the future (Oct. 21, 2015), back to an altered 1985 present, and then further back in the past (Nov. 12, 1955), with Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown (actor Christopher Lloyd) travelling in Doc’s DeLorean time machine, to help Doc  change unintended events that would otherwise have disastrous repercussions if the altered timeline was left unchanged.

Back to the Future Part II actually got a number of things right 25 years ago about the  world we are living in, which is no longer the future, but the present, Steve Tilley, a “gadgets, video games, viral videos and techno-miscellany” columnist for the Toronto Sun pointed out in a piece Nov. 21, including a movie world of endless sequels. “In the Hill Valley of 2015, Jaws 19 is playing at the Holomax, as Marty discovers when a giant computer-generated shark chomps at him on the street,” Tilley wrote. “While we might be waiting a while longer for holographic movie theatres (and the Jaws series petered out in 1987 with Jaws: The Revenge), epic-length 3D franchises like Harry Potter and the Marvel movies are definitely the norm today.”

Sadly, as Tilley also notes, “Flying cars are common in Hill Valley of 2015, yet we’re nowhere near avoiding commutes with consumer-friendly cars than can take off and land on a dime,” before dryly adding, “Then again, given how poorly some people drive on roads, it would be terrifying to see how they’d drive in the sky.”

But the good news is Secret Cinema, an organization that specializes in super-immersive screenings of favourite movies, recreated the fictional Northern California Hill Valley, with its famous clock tower, last summer in East London, where fans could wander through the town and travel through different periods in time via Doc’s souped-up DeLorean time machine, and mingle  with the dozens of actors taking part in the event. You can watch a trailer for it here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VrveujhWmg

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