Friday, February 12, 2010
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11:14 AM
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In 1639, three Ursulines nuns from Tours and Bordeaux disembarked at Quebec City, under the direction of Marie de Incarnation. At the request of the Jesuits, they had come to convert Native women and girls, and to instruct the daughters of early colonists. Their clientele was formed of boarders and day pupils from all social classes.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a constant drop in the numbers of Native students led the Ursulines to devote themselves solely to the education of colonists’ daughters. Over the years, they added new subjects to the Sciences. Following the Conquest, they willingly welcomed the daughters of British adminstrators, and began to study this language as their precursors had done for the Algonquin, the Montagnais and the Huron in 1639.
It was, for that matter, an Englishwoman – Sister Esther Wheelwright, farmer captive of the Abenaki – who was elected Mother Superior of the Ursulines of Quebec City in 1760. in 1697, Monseigneur de St – Vallier, who did not have the financial means to support two establishments, sent several Ursulines to Trois – Riveres to found a hospital- school. An institution was also founded in Louisiana in 1727, when Ursulines came to teach, in addition to the ladies of the young colony, female savages, negroes and slaves.
The Congregation Notre- Dame
The Congregation Notre- Dame was made up of laywomen, which had been assembled into a community in 1658 under the direction of their founder Marguerite Bourgeoys 1620- 1700. This teaching community, although secular, was officially approved by King Louis xiv and Monseigneur de Laval in 1671. From his first day in 1685, Monseigneur de St- Vallier, second bishop of the Colony, insisted that the founder make it into a religious community, which went on to receive canonic recognition in 1698, despite the strong reservations of Marguerite Bourgeoys.
In 1760, the Congregation Notre Dame numbered 215 nuns, all born in Canada. They spread out across the colony, first to Montreal, where in 1658 Marguerite Bourgeoys opened a mixed school – mixed because there weren’t yet enough children of each sex for two schools – in a stable fournished by the colonists. The mixed school lasted until 1666. Ten years later, the Congregation opened a boarding school at Ville – Marie for the daughters of the nobility and the middle class, as well as an Ouvroir de la Providence at Pointe- Saint – Charles. This Ouvroir de la Providence consisted of a domestic sciences school, in which the nuns taught older girls the skills they would need to gain a livelihood as servants.
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