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For fifteen years there was little change in the population, and year after year the same dangers and hardships faced the people. But Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance hoped on, confident that Ville Marie was destined to have a glorious future. In 1653 Marguerite Bourgeoys, a woman of great force of character, arrived in the colony to open a school.
Two thousand francs, furnished by the piety of the inhabitants, and one hundred louis from Sister Bourgeoys and her nuns, aided the foundress to complete the realization of a wish long cherished in her heart; the new chapel became an inseparable annex of the parish of Ville-Marie.
To this day, in crowded school-rooms of Montreal and Quebec, fit monuments of her unobtrusive virtue, her successors instruct the children of the poor, and embalm the pleasant memory of Marguerite Bourgeoys. Maisonneuve, with his forty men and four women, reached Quebec too late to ascend to Montreal that season. They encountered distrust, jealousy, and opposition.
But we are anticipating a little; for it was several years as yet before Marguerite Bourgeoys took an active part in the work of Montreal. She was the daughter of a respectable tradesman, and was now twenty-two years of age. Her portrait has come down to us; and her face is a mirror of frankness, loyalty, and womanly tenderness.
The men were not the only ones to spread the good word; holy maidens worked on their part for the glory of God, whether in the hospitals of Quebec and Montreal, or in the institution of the Ursulines in the heart of the city of Champlain, or, finally, in the modest school founded at Ville-Marie by Sister Marguerite Bourgeoys.
The Ursuline sisters and Mother Mary, their head, did a noble work for Canada; the same must be said of the venerable Mother Marguerite Bourgeoys and the ladies of the Congregation of Notre-Dame founded in 1659 at Montreal. At first this school was open to both boys and girls.
If the French-Canadians have preserved a certain character of politeness and urbanity, which strangers are not slow in admitting, they owe it in a great measure to the work of Marguerite Bourgeoys." The creation of a bishopric in Canada was becoming necessary, and all was ready for the erection of a separate see.
Notre-Dame de Bonsecours is still respected; the piety of Catholics defends it against all attacks of time or progress, and the little church raises proudly in the air that slight wooden steeple that more than once has turned aside the avenging bolt of the Most High. Sister Bourgeoys had begun it in 1657; to obtain the funds necessary for its completion she betook herself to Paris.
It was thanks to the efforts of Madame de la Peltrie, and to the lessons of Mother Incarnation and her first co-workers, that those patriarchal families whose type still persists in our time, were formed in the early days of the colony. The same services were rendered by Sister Bourgeoys to the government of Montreal. History of the United States, Vol. II., page 821.
Mance, the foundress of the Montreal hospital, Sister Bourgeoys, and two Sulpicians, MM. Vignal and Lemaître. Now this ship had long served as a sailors' hospital, and it had been sent back to sea without the necessary quarantine.
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