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Updated: May 26, 2025
Jeanne Mance, daughter of the attorney-general of Nogent-le-Roi, among the vine-clad hills of Champagne, who had bound herself to perpetual chastity from a remarkably early age, gladly joined in this religious undertaking. The company had in view the establishment of communities of secular priests, and of nuns to nurse the sick, and teach the children the French as well as the savages.
Monsieur de Maisonneuve, the destined founder, was accompanied by a troop of colonists, brave and chivalrous as himself; also by Mademoiselle Mance, whose particular mission was to open a convent of Hospital Sisters at Ville Marie, as the projected city was to be called.
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.
At Quebec, the barometer of piety, if I may be excused so bold a metaphor, held at the same level as that of Montreal, and he would be greatly deceived who, having read only the history of the early years of the latter city, should despair of finding in the centre of edification founded by Champlain, men worthy to rank with Queylus and Lemaître, with Souart and Vignal, with Closse and Maisonneuve, and women who might vie with Marguerite Bourgeoys, with Jeanne Mance or with Jeanne Leber.
The only place of public worship was the Hotel-Dieu chapel, fifty feet in length by thirty in width. The superior of the Sulpicians was Abbe Souart. Mother Mace was superioress of the Hotel-Dieu, but the mainstay of the institution was the well-known Mademoiselle Mance, who, by the aid of Madame de Bullion's benefactions, had founded it in 1643.
Mance went immediately to La Fleche, to get her arm reset, in that famous hospital, and hoped to bring back with her, on her return, a few of the Sisters, to assist in the management of the hospital she had established at Ville-Marie.
In position it was well adapted for the fur trade, and after the British took possession in 1760 it became the emporium of a great traffic in the fur-fields of the north and west. But its glorious days are those of its infancy, the days of Maisonneuve and Daulac, of Jeanne Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys, of Rene de Galinee and Dollier de Casson.
There was an altar in the open air, decorated with a taste that betokened no less of good nurture than of piety; and around it clustered the tents that sheltered the commandant, Maisonneuve, the two ladies, Madame de la Peltrie and Mademoiselle Mance, and the soldiers and laborers of the expedition.
All was ready; the ships set sail; but Olier, Dauversiere, and Fancamp remained at home, as did also the other Associates, with the exception of Maisonneuve and Mademoiselle Mance. In the following February, an impressive scene took place in the Church of Notre Dame, at Paris.
Many of the streets of Montreal, such as Dorchester, Sherbrooke, Wolfe, d'Youville, Jacques Cartier, Guy, Amherst, Murray, Vaudreuil, de Lagauchetière, Olier, Mance, Longueuil, and others equally well named, will carry down to future generations the memory of those who were prominent in the making and moulding of Canada.
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