CHOOSING A PATRON SAINT OF THE SOCIETY OF SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL IN CANADA Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys A little over a month ago, I was asked al). It was to be the first of seven voyages across the Atlantic that she would to submit the name of a Canadian take in order to carry out her life’s mission. No mean feat in the 1600’s! saint to be chosen as patron saint Upon arrival in Ville-Marie, Marguerite found there were no children there of Canada’s Society of Saint Vin- to be schooled due to the high infant mortality rate under such primitive cent de Paul. I have been the school conditions. So began her new life. She quickly started helping the communi- coordinator of our Conference for ty in any way she could and thus became what we would call today, a social the past few years, visiting many worker. She helped to organize the building of the first stone church in the classrooms and telling the students community and a school that would become Canada’s first public school. about the Society and what we do She also played a very prominent role in serving anyone in need within the in serving the poor. I always include community, including those of the indigenous population. Shortly after this the story of our long (four-hundred- time, she returned to France to recruit four women to serve as teachers in year) history as the first organized, the colony. (Such trips were made several times over the following years.) non-governmental, charity in the Marguerite was also responsible at this time for looking after the “filles du world. In doing my research, I de- roi,” – the young orphan girls sent from France by the Crown to marry and cided to choose Marguerite Bour- create families in the colony. geoys because she embodied the same strength of character, organi- Life was hard in the new colony, but Marguerite and her growing number of zational skills, love for the poor, and companions worked diligently to provide for their own subsistence, travel- overarching charism of both Saint ling by horseback, on foot or by canoe to the many settlements along the Vincent de Paul and Saint Louise de shores of the St. Lawrence River, teaching the local children - both French Marillac, who came before her, and and Indigenous. In time, her small group began to follow a religious way of of Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, who followed her two hundred years later. life. This eventually evolved (after many years of struggle for Marguerite with the French religious establishment) into North America’s first unclois- Marguerite Bourgeoys was the first female declared saint of Canada, can- tered religious community. Today the sisters of the Congregation of Notre onized in 1982. She lived out her life in the colony of New France, now a Dame are still very active in four continents, still carrying out Marguerite’s part of the province of Quebec. She is noted primarily for founding the first charism adapted to today’s world. Canadian non-cloistered religious order for women - the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal. This order was mainly a teaching order but from Marguerite Bourgeoys’s death, in 1700, mirrored her life of realism and its inception to the present time, has always served Christ in paying heed to mysticism in that she prayed God would take her life in place of one those less fortunate in their community, educating them and helping them the younger sisters who was very ill and dying. Marguerite, who was quite cope with their problems and learning the skills needed for them to live healthy at the time, died three days later. Her contemporaries showed her more fulfilling lives. great veneration and tribute and virtually “canonized” her 250 years before her beatification! Marguerite was born in Troyes, France April 17, 1620, the seventh of thir- teen children of a middle-class family. At fifteen, she joined a sodality -af Following closely the earlier work of Saint Vincent de Paul and Saint Louise filiated with the local monastery that taught religion and pedagogy to the de Marillac, who struggled to form an organization to help the poor in a children of the community whose families were not able to afford room troubled France amidst a civil war, Marguerite, unknowingly, was doing the and board in the monastery school. Five years later, at the age of 20, she same in a new society amidst a “clash of civilizations” and the difficulties experienced a profound religious incident that would further her religious of settling a new country. Our founder, Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, was to commitment, and to teaching, especially those in need. do the same in the early 1800’s, amidst the growing social problems of the new industrial revolution of his time. All were deeply rooted in their faith It was twelve years later (1652) that Marguerite met Paul de Chomedy, and the love of God, and devoted to service to the poor. Marguerite was the Sieur de Maisonneuve, the Governor of the French settlement at Montreal cornerstone of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in the New World, and in New France, while he was visiting his sister in Troyes. He invited her to deserves the title of our Patron Saint. come to Canada to start a school In Ville-Marie (the future city of Montre- Valarie Copp, Good Shepherd Conference, Edmonton, Alberta