One hospital at St. John’s, with a home for old men and women; also, a kindergarten.
In Western Canada, the Grey Nuns direct twenty-five establishments, and in the United States, fourteen.
THE PROTESTANT ORPHAN ASYLUM
The next movement for orphan children was on the part of the English ladies who formed before 1822 a Female Benevolent Society. This was followed by the “Protestant Orphan Asylum,” the connecting link being provided as follows by the following extract from the original minutes.[1]
“Upon the dissolution of the Female Benevolent Society in February, 1822, the officers and members of that institution consigned their orphan proteges and their flourishing little school to the care and maintenance of the Protestant churches of the city. The rector of the English Episcopal and the ministers of two Presbyterian churches accepted the charge.”
Founded therefore in 1822, without endowment the Protestant Orphan Asylum trusted entirely to the generosity of interested friends. The clergy of the city undertook to preach charity sermons for its benefit, and a substantial sum was thus raised. The constitution of the new charity was framed by the Rev. John Bethune, D.D., Dean of Montreal, and the Rev. Henry Esson, D.D., Pastor of St. Gabriel’s Presbyterian Church.
The first building occupied as an asylum (in 1833) was situated in St. Louis Street. The expenditure in this year was £211 10s 4d. In 1838 removal was made to more commodious premises in St. Antoine Street, the expenditure that year being £248 4s 5d.
In 1848 the annual reports were first published, and in the spring of the same year the foundations of a new home were laid, on land generously donated by Judge Smith on St. Catherine Street where Holland’s store now stands. This was sufficiently finished to permit the taking possession thereof June 4, 1849. The present building at 93 Côte des Neiges Road, was completed and occupied 1895.
It is interesting to compare the small beginnings of the earlier years with present conditions. For instance, in 1833, as previously stated, there was no endowment, and the expenditure for the year was £211 10s 4d, about $846. In 1911 the market value of its endowment fund amounted to $178,962, yielding a revenue of $9,143.50, and this with the annual subscriptions provided for the year, $10,109.80.
In the annual report for the year 1859 attention is called to the remarkable sanitary fact that out of upwards of six hundred children received into the home since its foundation, only forty-seven had died, notwithstanding the epidemic of cholera and typhus fever, at different times prevalent. And it may be added that this record has been maintained, and even surpassed, in the years that have followed.