The foundress

Aware of the pitiful state of rural schools in Quebec, Esther, in 1850, founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Anne. She wanted to devote herself to the education of children who were poor. As a special project, she had the desire to open “mixed schools” (both boys and girls), a proposal considered “very subversive” in her day. Esther, now called Sister Marie Anne, became the superior.

In 1853,with the booming expansion of the community and the consequent lack of space to continue receiving recruits and boarders, the sisters moved to Saint Jacques-de-l’Achigan (now Saint-Jacques-de-Montcalm) in the Joliette region. Sister Marie Anne encountered great problems.

Right from the following year, after many difficulties with a young priest, Father Louis Adolphe Marechal, who had become the chaplain for the community, Mother Marie Anne, instructed  by  Bishop Ignace Bourget to resign as superior, did so. She became directress of the boarding school at St. Genevieve. The influence of Father Marechal caused persecutions against her to continue, and four years later she was put down for the second time.

Photo : Archive of the Sisters of Saint Anne
Pupils and religious on the porch of Saint Jacques-de-l'Achigan convent, in 1868.

• Opening page of this section
• A congregation dating back to 1850
  • 1858
  • 1886
• Esther Blondin, our foundress
  • The foundress
  • Life in the shadows
  • Out of darkness
  • Woman of courage and tenacity
  • Prophet for her time
  • Among the marginalized