Grey Nun.
Born in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Lower Canada, she was one-quarter Indian. In 1843 she was proclaimed superior-foundress of the convent that her order intended to set up in Red River, and she led three of her colleagues west via canoe in 1844, arriving at the Forks on 21 June. She was re-elected superior in 1848, and she travelled east to Montreal for a general chapter meeting of her order in 1849, returning in 1850 with reinforcements for the convent. She headed east again in 1850, accompanying Louis Riel, Daniel McDougall, and Louis Schmidt to schools in Lower Canada and again returning with fresh recruits after a difficult journey. Under Mother Valade’s supervision, by 1857 the Grey Nuns had added a boarding school and an orphanage to the mission schools they had created in 1844, and they undertook nursing services for the community as well. Mother Valade died of cancer at Red River in 1861, only a few months after the destruction of the second St. Boniface Cathedral.
More information:
The Grey Nuns of Montreal and the Red River Settlement 1844-1984 by Estelle Mitchell (1984).
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
Page revised: 29 April 2008
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