In 2011, 400 years after the fact, Montreal’s city government recognized French nurse Jeanne Mance as one of the city’s official “founders.”
NUN THE WISER
The roles of women among explorers and settlers frequently are lost to history. But perhaps the most intriguing aspects of Jeanne Mance’s new stature are the multifaceted circumstances of her participation in the struggle to establish Montreal, and ensure its early survival.
Having discovered her calling as a Catholic missionary in her mid-30s, Mance eagerly signed on to the fundraising organization that modern-day locals recall as La Société de Notre-Dame de Montréal. (It’s often ignored that the full name of that organization was La Société de Notre-Dame de Montréal Pour la Conversion des Sauvages de la Nouvelle-France. That last bit translates rather directly.)
After helping establish the city of Quebec, Mance arrived with Montreal’s first French settlers in 1642 as a nurse and bursar, treating the sick and distributing everyday goods such as food… and gunpowder.
NURSE, INFUSION, PLEASE
Mance oversaw the construction and operation of a hospital that treated both the settlers and “savages”…but those local Iroquois proved much more interested in causing injuries than healing them, and Mance was forced to abandon the hospital and retreat into the fort.
She traveled to Paris in 1650 and raised 22,000 livres for the hospital fund from that city’s noblewomen—but when she returned to Montreal and saw all the violence around her, she turned over those funds to the military, which used them to acquire more manpower and munitions—a cash infusion credited with saving the city. It took nearly a decade, but eventually Mance was able to return to the hospital and complete her life’s work in a fashion more in line with her original ambitions.
The world’s largest octopus, scallop, and sea star were found in the ocean waters off British Columbia.