Legacy of Sisters of St. Ann alive and well in Victoria

By Laureen McMahon

Also See: St. Mark's celebrates realization of a dream

Hundreds of well-wishers, many dressed in authentic period costumes, jostled for a good view on the sunny Thursday afternoon of June 5 as the 1858 arrival of the Sisters of St. Ann on the west coast was re-enacted at Ship's Point in Victoria's inner harbour.

Laureen McMahon / The B.C. Catholic The arrival in 1858 of the Sisters of St. Ann in Fort Victoria was re-enacted June 5 in Victoria's inner harbour. Students played the parts of the four sisters and their companion and of Bishop Modeste Demers and his assistant priests.

After a welcome from "Sir James Douglas" they were conducted by "Bishop Modeste Demers" a short distance to their original convent and log cabin schoolroom, 20 feet by 30 feet, which was relocated behind the Royal British Columbia Museum in 1971. The procession then crossed the street to St. Ann's Academy National Historic Site for a service in the beautifully restored chapel. There Bishop Emeritus Remi De Roo thanked God for their safe arrival and for their preservation "on the long and perilous journey."

It was exactly 150 years to the day since four French-speaking sisters and one laywoman had disembarked at Fort Victoria after sailing up the Strait of Juan de Fuca accompanied by Bishop Demers. He had left the British colony months earlier to find

The term `pioneers' an understatement

teachers for the sons and daughters of Hudson's Bay employees, English and French settlers, and the "children of the forest."

Little could that small group of sisters, entrusted with bringing the Gospel of Christ to a remote village carved out of the wilderness of southern Vancouver Island, have realized the profound effect their obedience would have on the education and the health care of the future city, province, and northern territories, as well as Alaska.

To call these women pioneers is an huge understatement.

The Sisters of St. Ann began educating and providing medical care to their adopted community four years before Victoria was incorporated, in 1862. By the time B.C. joined Confederation in 1871, the first section of what is now St. Ann's Academy National Historic Site was ready for occupancy, as the number of students enrolled at the sisters' convent school had skyrocketed over the previous decade.

Over the next century, the Sisters of St. Ann opened more than 35 schools and hospitals throughout B.C., Alaska, and the Yukon. From the gold-rush towns of the Fraser River, the Cariboo, and the Klondike to the burgeoning communities of Kamloops, Nelson, and Smithers, they travelled on horseback and by boat to where they were most needed, often clearing brush, planting orchards and gardens, and always on fire for God.

Their mark on Victoria's heritage landscape and their stories of adventure, innovation, and fearlessness were recognized from June 5 to 8 when Island residents and visitors from around the world marked the anniversary over four fun-filled and historically significant days organized by the Provincial Capital Commission and the Society of Friends of St. Ann's Academy.

Sister Marie Zarowny, SSA, leader of the sisters' St. Joseph's Province, recalled during the chapel service the pioneering sisters' "creative audacity" and paid tribute to representatives of the PCC and the Society of Friends for "so creatively and willingly taking on these celebrations."

On Friday evening a free commemorative pops and light classical concert performed by the Victoria Symphony Orchestra under the direction of maestro Tania Miller entertained hundreds on the academy grounds.

The next morning Mass commenced with a fanfare of trumpets as over 40 Sisters of St. Ann processed into St. Andrew's Cathedral with spontaneous applause from the congregation ringing in their ears.

Bishop Richard Gagnon of Victoria offered the Mass. Concelebrating were Bishop Emeritus De Roo of Victoria; Archbishop Raymond Roussin, SM, of Vancouver; Archbishop Emeritus Frank Hurley of Anchorage, Alaska; and Bishop Emeritus Denis Croteau, OMI, of Mackenzie - Fort Smith (Northwest Territories). Afterwards, the sisters hosted a reception at St. Andrew's Parish Hall next to the school on Pandora St.

On Saturday evening former Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell, a boarding student for a year at St. Ann's Academy, reminisced in her keynote address about her school days at a gala dinner to benefit the University of Victoria Endowment Funds in education and nursing.

In an announcement greeted with great applause, Sister Patricia Donovan, SSA, announced that a total of $300,000 had been given by the Sisters of St. Ann to the University of Victoria's education and nursing faculties. Nurse practitioners and teachers seeking careers in rural communities are eligible to receive the money, explained Sister Donovan, enabling the congregation to continue their teaching and nursing missions in a significant way into the future.

On Sunday afternoon children with their families in tow came to enjoy games and entertainment at a Victorian picnic hosted by the Church of Our Lord on the grounds of St. Ann's Academy National Historic Site. In the weekend's second historical re-enactment, "Bishop Edward Cridge" of Victoria's Reformed Episcopal Church welcomed "Sister Mary Providence" to the neighbourhood. Everyone was invited to visit the site's interpretive centre and historic chapel.

The story of the Sisters of St. Ann in B.C. began in 1857, when James Douglas, Hudson's Bay Company's chief factor and governor of the colony, asked Bishop Demers to find teachers capable of bringing a religious presence to the rough and ready frontier settlement, which boasted a saloon on every corner.

The bishop, who had been appointed to the Diocese of Vancouver Island a year after it was erected in 1846, travelled to Vaudreuil, Que., to appeal to the Sisters of St. Ann. It was just eight years since their order had been founded by Mother (now Blessed) Marie-Anne Blondin. To his surprise and delight every sister in the order signalled her readiness to take up the daunting challenge.

The four chosen for the mission were Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart, Sister Mary Lumena, Sister Mary Conception, and Sister Mary Angele. With their lay companion, Mlle. Marie Mainville, and the bishop, they left Quebec on April 14. Six weeks later, after a journey which took them overland via the Isthmus of Panama (before the canal was built), then up the west coast from San Francisco on the SS Seabird, they were "home."

No one, least of all Bishop Demers, was expecting the changes which had taken place in his absence.

The great gold rush which began in the latter part of the 1850s had swelled the colony's population from 300 to 6,000 as gold prospectors poured in from across North America.

In her journal Sister Mary Angele wrote, "Our surprise was no less great than the bishop's. Some 200 neat looking houses had been erected, and beyond these stretched a sea of tents. We had been told that some 20 bark-roofed cabins hosted the few people who had made their homes near the fort, and that was all. The Cariboo Gold Rush of '57 and '58 had made the change."

Over the next few years an estimated 20,000 miners and adventure-seekers made their way to the now overcrowded settlement.

According to historian Deborah Rink in her book Spirited Women (published in 2000 by Harbour Publishing) the Sisters of St. Ann were often approached by men with marriage on their minds, even though they wore long black habits. Laywoman assistant Marie Mainville found herself showered with gifts from the lonely and hopeful miners and up to three marriage proposals a day which she continued to refuse, eventually returning to Quebec and professing religious vows at the age of 58.

From humble beginnings in the ramshackle log cabin on Fort Victoria's outskirts, the intrepid religious immediately began to minister in the name of Christ to their community's physical and the spiritual needs. Accommodation was primitive; they slept on mattresses piled in a corner during the day and cooked behind a partition.

Two days after arriving they opened the school and enrolled 12 students; by the end of the year there were 56 pupils. When St. Ann's Academy closed 115 years later in 1973, 35,799 students had been educated according to goals first laid down by Bishop Demers.

Young ladies, the bishop promised in his prospectus, would receive "the benefit of a good moral and domestic education, accompanied with the knowledge of the various branches of elementary training, together with those that constitute the higher departments of a finished education...." Discipline, he explained, would be "mild, yet sufficiently energetic to preserve that good order so essential to the well-being of the institution."

The times were very different from today, however, and the strict code of behaviour affected even Sir James Douglas's daughters Alice, Agnes, and Martha. They and 11 girls from other prominent families were asked to leave the school after they attended a ball on board a man-of-war docked in the harbour. It was against convent rules for girls to go to formal dances or the theatre!

Soon the sisters had opened a school on Broad Street and then, in 1860, a larger brick building was given to them by Bishop Demers on View St. This, until 1871, served as the main convent school for day scholars and for boarders, including orphans. The sisters taught reading, writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, geography, grammar, rhetoric, history, natural history, English, French, and plain and ornamental needle and net work. For additional fees music and drawing were offered.

The sisters purchased six acres near Beacon Hill Park, today's St. Ann's Academy National Historic Site. In 1871 they erected the central part of a new school; it was enlarged several times over the years, with the final wing added in 1910 designed and built by Thomas Hooper.

Twelve years before the B.C. Legislative Buildings were completed and 22 years before the Empress Hotel opened, St. Ann's was on its second expansion, tripling in size with the addition of a new east block. Dining rooms, dormitories, recreation rooms, parlours, a music conservatory, library, infirmary, dispensary, classrooms, and administrative offices all were part of the enlarged complex.

A chapel, added in 1886, had been the original wooden Catholic cathedral begun in 1858 across the street from St. Ann's.

The log and timber building constructed from local trees and redwoods from California was raised onto log skids and hauled by horses to its present location at St. Ann's and encased in brick. The chapel is today maintained by the Provincial Capital Commission and is open to the public. It has original oil paintings, art glass windows dating from 1913, and a Casavant pipe organ shipped from Quebec.

In 1864 the sisters purchased a 400-acre farm near Duncan on the condition that they would occupy and improve the land. The farm was first used as a boarding school for young native girls and then for orphaned girls from the convent school. It was next designated a boys' boarding school (1904) and, until 1921, housed between 30 and 50 students in the newly-built Providence School, named after Sister Mary Providence Tucker who, at the age of 22, had become superior of the Victoria community and was the guiding spirit behind the mission for decades.

In 1956 this school accepted boys and girls as day students and the enrollment was about 100. It closed in 1964, and in 1979 the Sisters of St. Ann entered into an agreement with the Vancouver Island Providence Community Association for the land to be used as a working farm providing fresh produce to the community.

To serve Victoria's health needs, in 1875 the sisters opened a two-storey brick St. Joseph's Hospital close to the academy, as their nursing and teaching missions had coincided. With no room in their cabin to care for the sick, the sisters usually visited area homes each evening to see those who were ill or injured.

The innovative sisters soon hit on a workable scheme to fund hospital care for the sick and for miners hurt in accidents. They offered a hospital payment plan whereby "all persons in good health, without distinction of age, sex, creed, or colour, can become members on payment of one dollar a month." Subscribers would have free admission to the hospital, visits from the hospital doctor at a reduced rate, and free medicine. Surplus funds were used for people unable to afford the plan.

The first expansion of the Sisters of St. Ann from Vancouver Island was to New Westminster on the B.C. mainland, where they opened St. Ann's Academy at the invitation of Bishop Louis-Joseph d'Herbomez, OMI, of the Vicariate Apostolic of British Columbia, then based in New Westminster. This was the second mainland Catholic school; the first was a boys school opened in 1863 by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Soon the sisters moved into missions in the province's interior, and in 1886 they went north to Juneau, Alaska, where they began 110 years of ministry in health care and education. In 1898 members of the order travelled to the Klondike to staff a hospital and school, and two years later they opened St. Joseph's School of Nursing, which served until 1981.

In 1889 a Western Novitiate opened in Victoria. By the 1970s 523 women (some 200 from B.C.) had been prepared for religious life there.

In 1892 St. Ann's Convent became St. Ann's Academy. Soon a commercial department opened, offering shorthand, typing, bookkeeping, and other office skills.

By 1908 the mission of the sisters had spread north, east, and south throughout the Pacific Northwest, with institutions offering academic courses, parochial schools, mission schools, boarding schools, four hospitals, and a school of nursing.

As their seventh decade opened Sister Mary Mildred, Prefect of Studies in St. Joseph's Province, established a set of examinations for teacher improvement and advancement. In 1921 a gymnasium was added to St. Ann's Academy near the auditorium designed by Sister Mary Osithe.

In 1939 the primary school and Kindergarten students were moved to a bigger school on Heywood Ave., next to the pioneer convent.

In 1958 several members of the congregation in Lachine, Que., travelled to Victoria to help the sisters celebrate their centenary in the west. A shrine in honour of St. Ann was a gift from the general administration of St. Joseph's Province.

In 1966 a new wing was added to the Centennial Annex; this became St. Ann's Secondary School.

After a wonderfully successful history, declining enrolment made it necessary to close St. Ann's Academy in 1973.

In 1982 the Provincial Capital Commission became the academy's managers for the province. Two years later the academy building was declared a provincial heritage site. In 1989 the federal government also recognized its architectural and historic significance.

The PCC joined the B.C. Building Corporation to spearhead a $16-million upgrade to create a steel and concrete building inside the heritage facade. Eleven years ago the academy celebrated the first stage of restoration, and the building officially reopened on July 12, 1997.

The former academy's two wings are currently under lease to the Ministry of Advanced Education, while the chapel and the central section, which houses the interpretive centre, has been restored to its 1920s appearance and is open to the public.

Queenswood Centre in Saanich near the University of Victoria is operated by the sisters today as an ecumenical conference facility for retreats and events, and the 50 sisters who belong to the Canadian Western (St. Joseph's) Province are engaged in numerous ministries of teaching, visiting the sick, and responding, as their mission statement says, "to the needs of our time and to the promptings of the Holy Spirit."

Today about 600 Sisters of St. Ann minister throughout Canada, the U.S., Haiti, Chile, the Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although their mission has changed from that of the pioneering sisters, today's Sisters of St. Ann, as many noted frequently during the anniversary festivities, maintain a deep and sincere desire to stay vitally involved in serving the community which God has entrusted to them.

These vibrant women, throughout the entire four days of historical re-enactments and other anniversary events and celebrations, were glowing with joy as they honoured each other and the magnificent accomplishments of those who came before them in the name of Blessed Marie-Anne Blondin.