[1] Plessis cultivated a new generation of priests during the difficult period leading up to the Lower Canada Rebellion, including Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Ferland, Narcisse-Charles Fortier, Jean-Baptiste Kelly, Thomas Maguire, and Pierre-Antoine Tabeau.

Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography stated that Plessis "studied classics in the College de Montreal, but refused to continue his education, and his father, who was a blacksmith, set him to work at the forge.

The popularity of Plessis with French Canadians excited the hostility of the English party, and General Prescott, the governor of the province, opposed the appointment, but he finally yielded to the demands of public opinion.

Efforts were made to appropriate the property of the Jesuits and of the Seminary of Montreal to the uses of the state, to organize an exclusively Protestant system of public instruction, and to give a power of veto on the nomination of priests and the erection of parishes to the English crown.

He received letters from the government recognizing his title and jurisdiction as Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec, and granting him a pension of a thousand louis a year with a seat in the Legislative Council of Lower Canada.

[1] Bishop Plessis was the first to introduce Christianity into the vast territory of Red River, and founded religious and educational institutions in Upper Canada and the provinces along the Gulf of St. Lawrence.