Br. Fabrician

Felix Pellerin was born on December 12, 1843, in Yamachiche, Canada, the son of Jean and Emerance Tonayger Pellerin. At age sixteen he entered the Novitiate at Montreal in August of 1859, where he received the robe of the Brothers and the religious name of Brother Fabrician. He was sent to the United States where he quickly mastered English at the school in Albany. In 1886 he was appointed Director of Saint James School in Brooklyn. He next served at the Academy in Utica and the at De La Salle in Providence. Brother Fabrician taught philosophy at Manhattan College and among his students was a young man who was to become Cardinal Hayes. In 1891 he was Director of St. John's College in Washington, D.C. As a victim of the "Latin Question" he was exiled to France but in 1923 he was elected to the General Chapter which removed the ban on teaching Latin. He returned to the United States after exile and taught at St. Mary's College in Oakland, California; at CBC in St. Louis, Missouri; and finally at Manhattan College in New York, where he served as archivist and librarian. He was stricken by cancer of the stomach and died at age eighty-three after having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for sixty-seven years.