Marguerite Bourgeoys arrived in Ville Marie, now known as Montreal, in November, 1653. She had made the voyage with a group of new recruits for the colony and endeared herself to them, earning the name of “sister.” Her task in Montreal was to organize schools for the children and young adults in the colony.
Marguerite's Stable School
It was five years before the first school was opened. The governor of Montreal, Monsieur de Maisonneuve, offered Marguerite an old stone stable for use as a school. Community members helped to fix the fireplace and roof, add windows, and scrub the entire stable.
On April 30, 1658, the stable school opened for classes. Eight pupils—three girls and five boys—were registered in the very first school register in Montreal. The stable served as a school for the next ten years, when Marguerite and her fellow citizens realized that the school had outgrown its building. The town officials and the people quickly pledged support for a better building.
Marguerite and her sisters taught not only reading, writing and arithmetic, but household skills that young women of the colony needed. She knew her students faced many challenges in their daily lives and “stressed the importance not only of "honourable work" but of the value and importance of their efforts” (Patricia Simpson). Simpson explains, “The intimacy in which she and her companions lived with the other settlers in the early colony, as well as her genius for perceiving and responding to the needs around her, made possible a form of education that was truly relevant to the lives of those who received it.”
Marguerite's Collaboration within the Colony
Marguerite recognized at once that her work required her to collaborate with other people. Her biographer Florence Quigley notes “the spiritual and psychological composure with which she entered into relationships with so many disparate groups. There were fellow-missionaries, pastors, church wardens, co-ordinators of one category or another within the parish and civic communities, heads of families.” Marguerite needed the assistance of nearly everyone in the new colony to get the school established.
She regularly met with the Sulpician Fathers in Montreal as well as de Maisonneuve and, after his withdrawal from office, with the Sovereign Council that replaced him. She was close friends with Jeanne Mance, who founded the first hospital in Montreal. Marguerite also had regular contact with other officials in Montreal, Quebec and Paris.
Her most important contacts, however, were the people of Montreal. Quigley notes that she “came to know her fellow colonists very well and they were perfectly at home with her. Their problems were her problems and her purposes corresponded to their needs.” Many came to consider her like a mother, especially the filles du roi, or king’s daughters, young women who were recruited by the French monarchy and given a dowry to travel to New France and marry.
Founding a Religious Order
Marguerite soon realized that she needed help. She needed sisters to work with her, such as she had known in the extern Congregation of Troyes in France. In 1658, just after her school opened, she travelled back to France to recruit young women to help her. These women became the first sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, an uncloistered order of teaching sisters.
In 1670, the Congregation of Notre Dame appealed to King Louis XIV of France for civil incorporation. It was granted the following year, as the king was “influenced, not simply by the weight of the many important signature that accompanied the request, but also by the fact that the petition represented the express will of the ‘people’” (Quigley). In 1676, the ten sisters of the Congregation received ecclesiastical recognition. Marguerite resigned as superior in 1693 but lived to see the Rule for the Order approved in 1698, allowing the sisters to pronounce their vows publicly.
Simpson notes that the Congregation was “one of the first uncloistered religious communities of women in the Catholic Church, a community that was self-supporting and that, unlike most of its counterparts in France at the time, has survived until today.”
Marguerite Bourgeoys' Legacy
By 1700, sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame were teaching in most population centres. They also had small missions at Lachine, Trois-Rivieres, and Quebec. The Mountain Mission, near Montreal, was the first school (opened in 1676) for Native American children.
Marguerite passed away on January 12, 1700. At her funeral service, officials “acknowledged Marguerite not only as a pioneer teacher, community builder and foundress of a teaching congregation in their midst, but also as a person who had been a lasting influence for good simply by the authentic holiness of her personal life” (Quigley). Marguerite was beatified in 1950 and canonised in 1982, the first woman saint in Canada. Her feast day is celebrated on January 12.
For more about Marguerite's early life and call to missions, see "Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys: Called to be a Missionary (1620-1653)."
Sources:
Simpson, Patricia. Excerpt from Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640-1665. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997.
Quigley, Florence, C.N.D. In the Company of Marguerite Bourgeoys. Ottawa: Novalis, 1982.
Vatican. “Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620-1700): foundress of the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame.”
Bonnie Way - Bonnie Way is a freelance writer and editor who works from home while chasing her two daughters.
