A year previously he had come to the attention of the Canadian Abbé, Léon Gingras, whom he had met (and apparently impressed) in Rome. Abbé Gingras entreated his friend and colleague the vicar-general of Quebec, Abbé Charles-Félix Cazeau, to have Brasseur de Bourbourg assigned to a job in the seminary there. Correspondence began in late 1844, with Abbé Gingras claiming that the seminary should ""...move heaven and earth to ensure that such a splendid bird does not escape us and fly to Montreal, where it would be so highly thought of"".