Generally known as the Grey Nuns since the establishment of
the community by Saint Marguerite d’Youville in 1737, the
Sisters of Charity of Montreal answered Bishop Provencher’s plea
for help and travelled to the Red River Settlement in 1844. In
1858, three more made the trip from Montreal to establish a
mission at Lac St. Anne, arriving in the autumn of 1859.1
Their journey was long, and began with a train ride through the
United States to Minnesota and the sisters finished the first
leg of their trip in an ox-drawn Red River cart. Of the three
sisters, Sister Emery (Zoé Leblanc) was the eldest, the other
two, Sister Adèle Lamy and Sister Alphonse (Marie Jacques) were
only 23. After a few months in St. Boniface spent learning from
the Grey Nuns who had come to the region earlier, the three
sisters departed for Lac St. Anne, accompanied by a young Métis
woman. Marie-Louise (only her first name was known) spoke Cree
and was the group’s interpreter; it is likely she was also their
language teacher.
Upon their arrival at Lac St. Anne, home to approximately 200
people, the sisters established themselves in the house which
the Oblate missionaries had made available to them. About 30
people greeted the sisters as the rest were out on the Prairie
involved in the buffalo hunt—then their principal living. The
Sisters were only at Lac St. Anne for five years when they moved
to the mission at St. Albert. Regardless of their residence, the
sisters assumed a multitude of tasks, be it teaching the people
to read, write, or pray. While tending to the necessary
gardening, cooking or sewing, the sisters freely taught the
skills they employed to anyone who wanted to learn. They also
found the time to study the Cree language, in order to converse
with the locals. When the sisters were still at Lac St. Anne
they prepared a 185-page grammar text which was incorporated in
Father Lacombe’s dictionary of the Cree language, published in
1874.
The mission at St. Albert became quite important and
prosperous, and the Grey Nuns played a significant role in this.
From a school, an orphanage and a very basic hospital, the
sisters eventually ran a large school for the children of the
area. At the inauguration of the province in 1905, 150 students
were enrolled in the school, which also accepted boarders. The
sisters taught at St. Albert until 1975, marking 115 years of
permanent residence and contribution to the community. From the
hospital annex which was constructed next to the mission in 1870
(considered to be the first hospital in Alberta’s central
region) rose, in 1895, the Edmonton General Hospital.
As well as administering their affairs at the St. Albert
Mission, the Grey Nuns also oversaw all of their other Western
missions. Since their humble beginnings at Lac St. Anne, their
numbers increased continually. Following the three sisters who
went to Lac La Biche in 1862, more nuns travelled to the
missions of the Athabasca-Mackenzie in 1867, where a dozen
missions and several hospitals were ultimately established.2
In 1897, the provincial council of the Vicariat of the province
of St. Albert oversaw the development of 10 missions and
residential schools from Île-à-la-Crosse to Fort Providence,
Fort Chipewyan to Dunbow in southern Alberta. The manager of all
of these missions was Mother vicar Eugénie Letellier who was
also the administrator of the Edmonton General Hospital. During
the following years, Mother vicar Léa Dandurand opened the St.
Paul Hospital in Saskatoon and the mission at Fort Resolution.
Mother vicar Agnes Carroll, who had established the Holy Cross
Hospital in Calgary in 1891, founded the Beauval mission between
1907 and 1910. Additional missions were established including
the one in Legal in 1920.
In 1915, the terms "mother vicar" and that of "vicariate"
were dropped in favour of "provincial superior" and "province."
The Provincial Superior Mother Saint-Grégoire (Marie-Louisa
Béliveau) established St. Thérèse Hospital in St. Paul in 1926.
The Grey Nuns of the province of St. Albert accepted the
transfer of several missions which had been established in
Alberta and Saskatchewan by the Grey Nuns of Nicolet. An
establishment was put into place at Portage-la-Loche in 1943.
During the 1950s, several huge projects were managed by the
Grey Nuns. In 1962, a new hospital was built in St. Paul to
replace the old one which was no longer adequate; a new building
was constructed at Lac St. Anne, the d’Youville Home in 1966;
and the Grey Nuns Regional Centre became a part of Edmonton in
1967. The more isolated regions were not forgotten and in 1967,
a mission was established at Buffalo Narrows, SK; Morinville in
1971; Zenon Park, SK in 1977; as well as at Tuktoyaktuk. It was
Sister Marguerite Laforce who agreed to allow the sisters to own
the Grey Nuns Hospital in Mill Woods in Edmonton, which opened
in 1988. Sister Faye Wylie approved the establishment of La
Salle Residence in 1988, and played an important role in the
establishment of St. Joseph’s College Bioethics Centre during
that same year. In 1992, she was instrumental in establishing
the Caritas Health Care Group in Edmonton, which regrouped all
of the Catholic health institutions. The sisters also kept a
nursing school to train their nurses. One must also remember
that before the establishment of the welfare state, the Grey
Nuns financed their own institutions. It was not rare during the
difficult years of the 1930s and 1940s that the delivery of a
newborn was paid for in firewood.
|