OZON, POTENTIEN, priest, Recollet, provincial commissioner for Canada; b. c. 1627 at Montargis (France); d. 16 June 1705 in Paris.

In 1645, when he was 18, Ozon made his religious profession in the Recollet house in Paris. He was appointed guardian of the convent at Châteauvillain in 1661 and in 1663 he exercised this office at the convent of Saint-Denis, at Paris. That same year he became a lecturer in theology. He was sent to Rome in 1667–68 as a delegate with an eye to the raising of the Recollet convents of the province of Artois into an ecclesiastical province. In 1671 he appears again, as novice master, then as guardian, of the convent at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and at the same time as superior of the convent at Versailles.

On becoming provincial visitor of the mission in Canada, he sailed from La Rochelle in June 1675 and reached Canada on 27 September. There he received two recruits who were to become famous, Father Joseph Denys and Brother Didace Pelletier*. He returned to France in December 1675.

In June 1676 he was appointed provincial commissioner for Canada; he visited the missions from Fort Frontenac (Kingston) on Lake Ontario to Percé. He returned to France in the autumn of 1677.

In 1683 he was guardian of the convent at Rouen, and in 1691 he was elected provincial of the Recollets of the province of Saint-Antoine in Artois, then in 1695 provincial of the province of Saint-Denis at Paris. In the latter capacity he presented to Bishop Saint-Vallier [La Croix], who was then in Paris, a request to have the local and personal interdict removed which the bishop had cast upon the convent in Montreal the preceding year, as a result of the affair of the prie-dieu [see Joseph Denys]. The bishop of Quebec assented to his request on 15 July 1695.

Ozon was re-elected provincial in 1701 and died at the convent in Paris 16 June 1705 at 78 years of age and after 60 years of life in holy orders.

Gabriel-M.-Réal Dumas

Archives des Franciscains de Québec, Dossier Potentien Ozon. ANDQ, Registres des baptêmes, mariages et sépultures. BN, MS, Fr. 13875, 15775, f.3. Jug. et délib., II, 97, 105–8. Le Clercq, First establishment of the faith (Shea); New relation of Gaspesia (Ganong). Le Tac, Histoire chronologique de la N.-F. (Réveillaud). Gosselin, L’Église du Canada, I, 117ff. Rochemonteix, Les Jésuites et la N.-F. au XVII^e siècle, III, 639. France franciscaine (Lille), I (1912), 111. Hugolin [Stanislas Lemay], “L’établissement des Récollets à l’isle Percée 1673–1690,” BRH, XVII (1911), 346.