Founding of the SSA (cont. • 1858)

to continue

In 1858, four Sisters set out for Victoria, on Vancouver Island. In those days, there was no railway connecting eastern and western Canada, and so they had to travel by boat, crossing the Isthmus of Panama overland. It took them six weeks to reach Victoria, inhabited at the time by native people, traders and adventurers in search of gold.

     A new “empty place to be filled” suddenly arose in the United States in 1867. It was a dark page in the history of many French Canadians, who had to emigrate to find work. More than a million of them crossed the U.S. border during that time. Fearing that the new arrivals might lose their language and their faith, the bishops and clergy called on the Sisters of Saint Anne, who in turn embraced exile to go serve their compatriots. Their first move was to Oswego, New York and from there they extended their apostolate into the Archdiocese of Boston and the dioceses of Providence, Albany, Springfield and Worcester. As the years passed, a dynamic succession of American sisters rose to direct the Congregation’s works, and the Congregation’s influence spread as far as Florida, Virginia, Missouri and Maryland.
 

 

 

 



 

   

 

March 2015
www.ssacong.org
Congregation of Sisters of Saint Anne