When the last Jesuit in Canada died in 1800 the Crown took the order's estates, and 88 years later the Pope divided the compensation

Under French rule the Jesuits received large estates and seigneuries to pay for schools and missions. After the conquest Britain held the estates, and the Pope suppressed the order in 1773. Jean-Joseph Casot, born in 1728 near Liège, came to Canada as a lay brother in 1757 and was ordained in 1766. From 1790 he administered the Jesuit estates and acted as if he owned them, giving most of the large income to the poor. His 1796 will gave church furnishings to the coadjutor bishop, the city churches and the Ursulines. Lieutenant Governor Sir Robert Shore Milnes refused to recognize the will's legality. The Ursulines called Casot "the last of the sons of Ignatius in this country." He died on 16 March 1800, and the Crown took the estates. London gave them to Lower Canada in 1831; Quebec owned them after Confederation. The Jesuits returned in 1842, and in 1871 Rome let them negotiate. Archbishop Taschereau wanted the money for Catholic schools. Premier Honoré Mercier asked Pope Leo XIII to arbitrate. In July 1888 the Assembly unanimously passed the Jesuits' Estates Act: $400,000 divided as the Pope directed, $160,000 to the Jesuits, $140,000 to Université Laval and $100,000 to dioceses, plus $60,000 for Protestant education. Ontario's Orange Order protested. In March 1889 the House of Commons refused to disallow the law, 188 votes to 13, and Dalton McCarthy left the Conservative Party.