In 1660, Quebec City was a fragile settlement of fewer than 800 French colonists, isolated from Europe for most of the year and surrounded by unfamiliar territory,. Amid this tense backdrop unfolded one of the strangest chapters in early Canadian history: Canada’s earliest documented case of demon possession linked to witchcraft.
The ordeal centered on Barbe Hallay, a teenage domestic servant working at a manor house in Beauport, just outside Quebec City. Hallay began suffering from terrifying visions and violent outbursts. Prominent figures in the colony suspected that a local newcomer named Daniel Vuil had used “diabolical arts” to send a demon to possess her.
Piecing Together a Forgotten Microhistory
University of Toronto-Mississauga historian Mairi Cowan reconstructed the events in her book, The Possession of Barbe Hallay, by combing through surviving 17th-century records,. Her research relied on Jesuit daily journals, an aristocrat’s memoir, letters from an Ursuline nun, and the biography of a sister who spent a full year attempting nightly exorcisms.
According to Cowan, the panic surrounding Hallay reflected the deep insecurity of the French colonial project. French missionaries were struggling to convert their Wendat allies to Catholicism, and Queen’s University historian Scott Bertholette notes that encounters with Indigenous spiritualities heightened colonial anxieties about evil spirits and witches.
An Execution and a “Do-It-Yourself” Exorcism
Colonial authorities eventually executed Daniel Vuil—reportedly on the orders of Bishop François de Laval, though the formal court records have since been lost. Yet Vuil’s execution did not stop Hallay’s symptoms.
Her torment only ended after a highly unusual intervention. A laywoman performed what amounted to an unofficial, “do-it-yourself” exorcism using a rib bone believed to belong to Saint Jean de Brébeuf, a French Jesuit missionary killed in 1649,.
Under normal Catholic rules, a layperson would never be permitted to conduct such a rite. However, Cowan notes that in a remote, vulnerable outpost cut off from France, frightened colonists were willing to bend strict religious traditions to survive,.