Joanna Emery - Caring for a Colony. The Story of Jeanne Mance

The Story of
Jeanne Mance

The Story of
Jeanne Mance

by

Joanna Emery

Illustrations by Chrissie Wysotski

Series Editor: Allister Thompson

Napoleon Publishing

Text copyright 2005 Joanna Emery

Illustrations copyright 2005 Chrissie Wysotski

Cover illustration 2005 Liz Milkau

All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Napoleon Publishing

Toronto Ontario Canada

Napoleon Publishing acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

Printed in Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Emery, Joanna

Caring for a colony : the story of Jeanne Mance / Joanna Emery.

(Stories of Canada)

ISBN 1-894917-07-3

1. Mance, Jeanne, 1606-1673--Juvenile literature. 2. Htel-Dieu de Montral--History--Juvenile literature. 3. Nurses--Canada--Biography--Juvenile literature. 4. Canada--History--To 1763 (New France)--Juvenile literature. I. Title. II. Series: Stories of Canada (Toronto, Ont.)

FC306.M35E44 2005 j971.016092

C2005-903466-1

I dedicate this book to
my husband, Greg.

Jeanne cradled the urn in her lap. She closed her eyes and thought of her old friend, the founder of the St. Sulpice Order, abb Jean-Jacques Olier. He had died the year before her arrival in Paris and before her accident back in New France. A slip on the ice had left Jeannes right arm badly damaged and completely immobile for more than eighteen months.

I ask only for strength in my duties, she prayed softly. Inside the urn was the preserved heart of Monsieur Olier. As her lips moved in silence, a warm sensation tingled throughout her arm. Jeanne could not believe it. Her withered arm looked the same, but the pain was gone! She could move it as well as before the injury.

Was it a miracle? Or was it simply mind over matter? Jeanne certainly believed it was a miracle. One thing is sure: Jeanne Mance had a strong will. Once she made a decision, nothing could stop her. She possessed an intense desire to serve and care for others. Her courage carried her across the ocean seven times. Her devotion made her the founder of Montreals first hospital, and her resourcefulness saved the new settlement from near destruction.

Jeanne has rightly been called The Mother of Montreal.

This miniature painted on wood is the closest image we have to an authentic portrait of Jeanne Mance. In the mid-nineteenth century, Sister Paquette, a nun and archivist at Htel-Dieu in Montreal, wrote on the back the words true portrait of Miss Mance before coming to Canada, 1638.

From an early age, Jeanne Mance was taught to care. Perhaps, as a young girl, she treated wounded birds or fussed over the latest litter of newborn barn kittens. These fragile but determined creatures may have reminded Jeanne of herself. She had never been in perfect health, but that did not stop her.

Like most females in seventeenth-century Europe, Jeanne knew that when she grew up, she would be expected to devote her life to others. She could marry and tend to a husband and children or join a religious order and become a nun. Many nuns taught or actively served the poor. Some were cloistered and remained secluded in convents. Their duty was to pray for the welfare of the world.

Jeanne had something else in common with those barn kittens, an intense curiosity. Outside her comfortable home was a world of adventure. For the kittens, this meant the fields and meadows. For Jeanne, her destiny lay five thousand miles away in a colony in North America called New France.

Jeanne grew up in Langres, France, a medieval town in the province of Champagne.

Jeanne would have loved the barn kittens, just as this little girl does.

The name Canada comes from kanataan aboriginal word for village. In 1608, the year Jeanne Mance turned two, the French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, founded a settlement on the shores of todays St. Lawrence River and called it New France.

Decades earlier, another explorer named Jacques Cartier had travelled up the St. Lawrence River to the site of present-day Quebec City.

Quebec means where the river narrows, although at the time, the First Peoples called their village Stadacona. They greeted the Europeans warmly, but when Cartier continued on to the village of Hochelaga, the site known today as Montreal, he offended the Native chief, Donnacona. Cartier and his men also unintentionally brought disease. During the first winter, at least fifty Native people died from European illnesses they had never known before, such as smallpox (or purple fever) and flu.

At first, France didnt have much interest in the new colony. Imagine that you have decided to live on Mars. The comments from friends and family would probably be the same: Youre crazy! Its dangerous! Youll get killed there! Most people thought the same about New France. But there were two main reasons why some took the risk. One was for God, and the other was for money.