 |
magazine / so06
 |
September/October 2006 issue |
|
|
|
Institutional memory
Sister Estelle Mitchell, 90, is a fine figure of a woman, with a
ramrod-straight back and an orator’s gift for the quick comeback.
She has taught school, worked in an orphanage and travelled
throughout Western Canada recruiting nuns. She is the
author of 11 books on the history of the Grey Nuns, with another
in the works, and she still speaks at history conferences.
Nowadays, she says, people remember the negative aspects of
the province’s religious history and overlook the contributions that
were made by nuns who devoted their lives to caring for others.
"People don’t seem to remember," she says, "that we have
education and health care because there were nuns and brothers
who started schools and hospitals.".
Quebec’s nuns have been stung by criticism over the treatment
of the Duplessis orphans. During the 1940s and 1950s, an era
when church-run orphanages in the province were full of babies
born out of wedlock, thousands of children were falsely certified as
mentally ill and interned in mental hospitals so that the provincial
government could collect federal subsidies for their care. The
Duplessis orphans were named after the premier whose government
betrayed its mandate to the children.
Montréal’s Grey Nuns were not involved with the Duplessis
orphans scandal; however, they did care for orphaned and abandoned
children. Sister Mitchell’s face lights up when she talks
about the toddlers she cared for at the Crèche d’Youville.
"It was the opportunity of my lifetime to talk to those children
about God. I made them dance. I made them sing. I loved them as
if they were my own."
— Marian Scott
top
|
|
| ADVERTISEMENT |
|
|
|
|
