By 1905 the congregation had spread over eighteen dioceses and had seventy-seven houses. In 1913 it had ninety-seven houses. Its foundress, Marie Emmeline Eugene Tavernier, was born on February 19, 1800. On June 4, 1823, she was married to Jean Baptiste Gamelin, a man of fifty, described in the marrage register as a “burgher,” the appellation then given to a proprietor living on his income. Three children were born of the union. Two died three months after birth. In 1827 Mr. Gamelin died and the following year the third child also. The widow’s heart now turned to the aged and poor. On March 4, 1828, she opened a modest refuge on the ground floor of a small parochial school, directed by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, situated on the corner of St. Lawrence and St. Catherine streets. The first beneficiary was a widow named St. Onge, 102 years old. The refuge was shortly removed to two houses rented on St. Philippe Street with her charges, which soon reached the number of thirty, not always over-grateful.
About this time Madame Gamelin formed a society of lady auxiliaries, Mesdames François Tavernier, E.R. Fabre, Maurice Nolan, Augustine Tullock, R. St. Jean, Paul Joseph LaCroix, Joseph Gauvin, Simon Dalorme and Julien Tavernier. This society, founded on December 13, 1827, and organized on December 18th of the same year, still exists as the “Society of the Ladies of Charity.” Each of these agreed to pay a monthly board for one poor woman. During the cholera outbreak of 1832-1834 Madame Gamelin did not spare herself in visiting the sick. The “yellow” house was secured for the growing needs of the refuge by M. Olivier Berthelet, whose name is linked with Montreal’s charities. It was a modest frame building, two stories in height, standing on St. Catherine and Hubert streets. During the political troubles of 1837-38 there commenced the work, still pursued by her followers, of visiting the Montreal jails. Writing in his “Patriots of 1837-38” Mr. L.O. David, afterwards city clerk of Montreal, and a senator, said: “There are two names in particular deserving of special mention and which the prisoners have never forgotten, Madame Gamelin, who later became the foundress of the Providence, and Madame Gauvin, mother of Doctor Gauvin, who himself took part in the events of 1837.” In 1841 Madame Gamelin’s asylum obtained civil incorporation through a measure, introduced by the Hon. D. Viger and the Hon. J. Quesnel, under the name of “Corporation for Aged and Infirm Women of Montreal.”
In 1841 the work was so well founded that to secure its permanency as a constituted diocesan charity the ladies associated with it, under the beautiful name of the Ladies of Providence, determined to give it over to the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, then lately visited in Paris by Bishop Bourget. A new building was forthwith determined on to receive them, and for the funds for this, the first bazaar recorded in Montreal was organized, in Rasco’s Hotel on St. Paul Street, on May 15, 16, 1842, and netted 500 louis. The directresses were Mesdames Gamelin, Gauvin, St. Jean, Fabre, Levesque, Boyer, Moreau and Lafontaine. Other sums were raised and the corner stone of the house opposite the “yellow” house was blessed on May 10, 1842. About the middle of June, 1842, Bishop Bourget gave Madame Gamelin and the Ladies of Providence a rule modelled upon that which St. Vincent de Paul had drawn up for a society of ladies in Paris who had consecrated themselves to the work. The Daughters of St. Vincent de Paul did not come, after all, and Bishop Bourget determined to create a diocesan order of the Sisters of Charity of Providence. On March 25, 1843, the first clothing took place of the first six postulants in the “yellow” house, who were to obey Madame Gamelin as their superior. As yet she was not herself a religious, but on July 8th, on one of the postulant’s returning to the world, Madame Gamelin determined to take her place and she was accepted by the Bishop as one of the new order of the Sisters of Providence, one of whose early works was to carry on the work of the care of the aged and infirm already begun by Madame Gamelin in 1827. In 1860 her institute established an asylum for “abandoned” children, French Canadian and Irish, which was opened on September 25th.
The work for the insane at Longue Pointe, begun in 1849, is told elsewhere.
L’ASILE DE MONTREAL
Meanwhile the year of the cholera, 1832, had seen the birth, on July 18, of the “L’Asile de Mountréal pour les orphelins Catholiques Romains” or “Les Orphelins des Récollets,” so called because these orphans were first cared for in the convent of the Récollets. The asylum received its incorporation in September, 1841. The work was promoted by a Sulpician, the Rev. P. Phelan, and a widow, Madame Gabriel Cotté, who became its foundress and received her helpers from among the “Ladies of Charity.” Among the Ladies of Charity under whose auspices the new work was placed and still continues, were those of the best society of Montreal. The first president was Madame Marie Charles Joseph LeMoyne, Baroness de Longueuil, the wife of Captain David Alexander Grant, of the Ninety-fourth Regiment, who died on February 25, 1841. The vice presidents were Madame de Lothbinidère and Madame de Beaujeu. On the death of the Baroness de Longueuil she was succeeded as president by Madame Berthelet, Madame D.B. Viger, Madame C.S. Cherrier and Madame T. Bouthillier. Under the board of directors the asylum was conducted successively by Madame Chalifoux and Madamoiselle Morin. The present president is Madame J.O. Gravel and the vice president is Madame Rosaire Thibaudeau, niece of the esteemed foundress, Madame Cotté.
The institution has remained under lay control, although since 1889 the Grey Nuns have been invited to undertake the internal management. Madame Cotté was its first treasurer, being succeeded by her daughter, Madame Quesnel, who supported the work till her death. The foundress, Madame Cotté, endowed the work with a gift of land, that named “Pres de Ville,” on Lagauchetière Street, and with a legacy in money. Her heirs exchanged the original land for that on St. Catherine Street on which the institution stands today, a part of which was built by the legacies in money left by Madame Cotté and Madame Quesnel.
In 1913 the orphanage and grounds were sold and a spacious property bought for the new orphanage site at Notre Dame de Grâces. The new buildings have been commenced but have been interrupted by the European war of 1914.
The dire year of 1847, that of typhus fever, saw great activity among all these French and English institutions for charitable works. As the incoming immigrants were mostly Catholics the activities of the Catholic institutions of the period may naturally be recalled. The “Providence Sisters,” lately erected as a religious congregation, were called by Bishop Bourget to second the Grey Nuns, the Nuns of the Congregation and the Nuns of the Hôtel Dieu at the fever-stricken sheds at Point St. Charles. The work of caring for the 600 or more orphans of the emigrants was confided to the Sisters of Providence in the two provisory hospitals. The religious of the Good Shepherd, who had been called to Montreal in 1844, finally took charge of the girls, and Madame Gamelin’s “Providence” Sisters took the boys to Mrs. Nolan’s house on St. Catherine Street. Bishop Bourget’s pastoral letter of 1848 describing the transference of the children through the street states: “The spectacle of hundreds of children famishing with hunger, covered with rags and in danger of succumbing to the attacks of that terrible disease which had deprived them of their parents was so poignant that it can never be forgotten.” Twenty-seven of the “Providence” Sisters were stricken with the plague and three died, and similar disaster befell other charitable “Congregations” or lay associations of all sections.
On the 1st of October the orphans were removed from their temporary home in Mrs. Nolan’s house to the former convent of the Good Shepherd, situated on Beaudry Street, then Black Horse Street, the new Hospice of St. Jerome Emilianus. From the 11th of July Mother Gamelin had received 650 orphans. Of that number 332 died and 188 were placed out or adopted. In the month of March, 1848, 130 remained in addition to 99 who stayed in the sheds at Point St. Charles. An appeal at this time was made by Bishop Bourget and colleges, convents and lay people responded in adopting the children. Sixty remained with the Sisters of Providence and were distributed among the different houses or apprenticed to trades. “In adopting these poor children,” says the same pastoral, “they will become our companions in faith, good priests, fervent religious, excellent citizens,” as, indeed, they did.