Don and Rosalie (“Posie”) McPhee began the Nazareth Family Apostolate in the early 1980's. Don and Posie heard the call for the need to restore family life through the model of the Holy Family, of Our Lord's thirty hidden years in Nazareth. Both Don and Posie were converts to the catholic faith. The apostolate began as a series of family retreats given at the Nazareth family retreat centre in Combermere, Ontario, Canada. in the early 1980's. Rosalie McPhee was also co-founder of the popular Nazareth Family Journal, which ran quarterly from 1991 to 1997. (Keep checking back to this site for electronic copies of the Nazareth Family Journal).

After the retreats had been running very successfully for several years, Don had the foresight to produce a video series of six tapes based on the teaching and sharing of a Nazareth Family week. He asked several of the key associate families to participate in the video project. Today, we have access to this wonderful legacy for our own retreats.

In the early 1990's, Don (now an ordained Deacon) and Posie moved with their family to Minnesota to work in a pastoral mission. Don was now an ordained Deacon. During this time, Don became very ill with complications stemming from his previous trade of guitar making. Don went to his heavenly reward in the 1997.

The spirit of the Nazareth weeks continued continued for a few more years through weekend retreats presented by Nazareth associate families. In the fall of 2000, a group of families in Rockland, Ontario, led by David and Cheryl Darwent, were encouraged by their pastor, Fr. Yves Marchildon, to offer a Nazareth retreat, based on the Nazareth videotapes. David’s brother-in-law, Danny Cere (a professor at McGill University) and his wife Jacqueline are the founders of Dominus Vobiscum retreat centre. It was decided that the centre would be the ideal site at which to offer a Nazareth family retreat for interested families. They were not sure if anyone would drive 3 to 4 hours for a retreat but these weeks have been fully attended for several years running. The success of the Nazareth Weeks seemed to indicate an on-going need for ministry and so the follow-up Nazareth Week, also known as "Week Two", was conceived in 2003 for families who had already attended a Nazareth Week.

The Dominus Vobiscum Retreat Centre is owned by the Arch-diocese of Montreal and is on loan to the Newman Centre at McGill University. It consists of over 250 acres on the shores of Lac Maskinongé in the Quebec Laurentians. A very dedicated group of volunteer families have been restoring the camp to operational status little by little after the camp fell into disrepair and abandonment in the 1980s. The retreat centre has a history of ministering to families dating back to the 1930s.