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Updated: June 22, 2025
What nobler ambition could woman have than to be a member of that sweet sisterhood which was founded by the holy Marie de l'Incarnation and the sainted Jeanne le Ber at Montreal? It was but the other day that I had an account of them from Father Godet des Marais.
The king gratified him by sending whole shiploads of them in charge of nuns. As to who they were, and where they came from, one cannot be altogether sure. The English agent at Paris wrote that they were 'lewd strumpets gathered up by the officers of the city, and even the saintly Mere Marie de l'Incarnation confessed that there was beaucoup de canaille among them.
Her biographers say, and doubtless with truth, that her heart was far away from these mundane interests; yet her talent for business was not the less displayed. Her spiritual guides were aware of it, and saw clearly that gifts so useful to the world might be made equally useful to the Church. Yet it was from heaven itself that Marie de l'Incarnation received her first "vocation" to Canada.
Once, on a misty morning, a wild cry of alarm startled crew and passengers alike. A huge iceberg was drifting close upon them. The peril was extreme. Madame de la Peltrie clung to Marie de l'Incarnation, who stood perfectly calm, and gathered her gown about her feet that she might drown with decency. It is scarcely necessary to say that they were saved by a vow to the Virgin and St. Joseph.
As they recognized him and knew his mettle, they thought treachery better than an open attack. They therefore approached him in the attitude of friends; while he, ignorant of the rupture of the treaty, began to sing his peace-song. Marie de l'Incarnation, Lettre a son Fils. Quebec, . . . 1647.
In the convent, as in the world, the fair devotee thirsted for admiration. The halo of saintship glittered in her eyes like a diamond crown, and she aspired to outshine her sisters in humility. Marie de l'Incarnation died the following year. We come now to an enterprise as singular in its character as it proved important in its results.
This account is drawn mainly from Radisson's Journal, partly from Father Ragueneau, and in one detail from a letter of Marie de l'Incarnation. Garneau says the feasters were drugged, but I cannot find his authority for this, though from my knowledge of fur traders' escapes, I fancy it would hardly have been human nature not to add a sleeping potion to the kettles.
'These worthy gentlemen, wrote Mother Marie de l'Incarnation, 'are at work, with the king's permission, establishing new French colonies. They live on their farm produce, for they have oxen, cows, and poultry. A census taken in 1668 gave very satisfactory figures. A year before there had been 11,448 acres under cultivation.
There were four chimneys, with fireplaces burning a hundred and seventy-five cords of wood in a winter; and though the nuns were boxed up in beds which closed like chests, Marie de l'Incarnation complains bitterly of the cold. Now and henceforward one figure stands nobly conspicuous in this devoted sisterhood.
She was very rich and very beautiful, and a saint from the beginning, so that when her husband died, and her poor old father wanted her to marry again and not go into a nunnery, she didn't mind cheating him by a sham marriage with a devout gentleman; and she came to Canada as soon as her father was dead, with another saint, Marie de l'Incarnation, and founded this convent.
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