After postings in France and Italy, in 1842 Tellier emigrated to Canada with several other Jesuits determined to establish the order there.

He entered the Jesuit Order on October 11, 1818, and spent many years teaching at a variety of colleges.

The invited speaker at the college that year was Orestes Brownson, a philosopher and Catholic convert.

Brownson often disagreed with the political views of John Hughes, the archbishop of New York and founder of St.

Tellier needed to find accommodations for the Jesuit scholastics who left the seminary, and began an extensive remodeling of Rose Hill Manor.

[6] In 1857 Hughes wrote a letter to Tellier expressing his dissatisfaction with the Jesuits: "I have understood that the Jesuits in my diocese have been making appeals to some of our lay-Catholics in the way of seeking redress or securing sympathy on account of real or imaginary grievances which your Society have had to suffer at my hands.