scholastic, Brother John Duffy, traveled, on an Allan Line Royal Mail Steamers ship, the SS Norwegian, with Mgr. Tache, on his return to Canada following his visit to a General Chapter in Rome, along with newly ordained Father Emile Petitot. They arrived in Fort Garry (Winnipeg) on 26 May 1862. Father Albert Lacombe then took Scollen across the prairies to St. Albert, Alberta. For parts of these journeys, they were accompanied by members of the "Overlanders", who were a group of would be gold miners, mainly from Ontario, involved in the Cariboo Gold Rush to British Columbia. He opened an English language school for children of the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, at nearby Fort Edmonton. He then immediately began studying the Cree language, the first of his later to be six first nations tongues, along with French which was the language of the other oblates. In 1867 there was a famine in the district so it became necessary to disperse the families to other posts in other areas. This greatly reduced the number of pupils so the school closed in 1868. He had taken his perpetual vows as a scholastic on 15 August 1865 on the understanding that he would be allowed to study for the priesthood. After some delays and interruptions caused by long periods out on the prairies living with the native peoples, he was able to continue his philosophy and theology studies under Father Vital Fourmond and was ordained on Easter Saturday 12 April 1873 by Bishop Grandin. He immediately left St Albert to begin his mission to the Blackfoot, on the Prairies. He was accompanied by fellow Oblate priest Fr Vital Fourmond as his superior. The group included Louis Daze, a French Canadian whose brother was an Oblate priest in Ottawa, who acted as a lay brother.(Daze died in a blizzard a year later while attempting to recover straying horses.) The group also included two others, Alexis Cardinal, a Metis and Jean-Baptiste L'heureux, a French Canadian, who acted as hunters, guides, catechists and interpreters (Scollen had begun studying Blackfoot in 1868 and was already fluent in both Cree and Chippewa) For the next eight years he remained mainly with the Blackfoot (Siksika Nation) and Kainai Blood people on the plains of Southern Alberta and Northern Montana, living their hard nomadic life without break apart from brief spring and autumn visits to St Albert, for