Why was marguerite bourgeoys important

Her work led her to being invited by the Governor of the French settlement in Montreal to establish a new school there, which she accepted.

Marguerite crossed the Atlantic seven times during the time she was setting up her Community in Canada. Voyages during that time could be treacherous. Many people were sick, contracted diseases and even died during these long voyages. The testimony of her contemporaries affirms that people had recourse on every occasion to Marguerite, a real social worker before the invention of the term.

But the mission towards which her inclinations and her natural disposition urged her was teaching. On 30 April Marguerite Bourgeoys was finally able to receive her first pupils in a stable that had been given her by Maisonneuve for want of something better.

It was to her house that the settlers of Ville-Marie came to seek a wife, and they had to undergo a rigorous examination. This was perhaps the most astonishing of all her journeys.

She set off, the only woman, with ten sols in her pocket. Jean Talon , in his report dated 10 Nov. This period was for Marguerite Bourgeoys the beginning of the golden age of her work in New France, a decade of great expansion. At the request of the noble and bourgeois families who had previously sent their daughters to Quebec, Marguerite Bourgeoys opened a boarding-school at Ville-Marie, in For them she set up the first domestic training school in the country, the needle-work school Ouvroir de la Providence , at Saint-Charles point.

In addition she sent her assistants to all those who could not come to the boarding-school. The little Indian girls were always special favourites of hers. From the time she came to Ville-Marie, Marguerite Bourgeoys had always attracted and welcomed a few to her school. Around she established a mission in the Indian village of Montagne. The sisters taught in cabins made of bark. Bourgeoys learned about Canada and its religious needs in when she met the governor of Montreal, Paul de Chomedey de Maisoneuve, during his visit to his sister who was the superior of the Troyes convent.

He accepted Bourgeoys' offer of help rather than that of the nuns, whose organization and special apostolate seemed to him unsuited to rough frontier conditions and needs.

Arriving in Montreal on Nov. In she became Montreal's first schoolmistress when she converted an abandoned stable into an elementary school. Later she started schools in and near the island of Montreal, including the city of Quebec. She is rightly considered co-foundress of Montreal, with the nurse, Jeanne Mance, and the master designer, Monsieur de Maisonneuve.

In order to encourage the colonists in their faith expression, she arranged for the restoration of the Cross on Mount Royal after it has been destroyed by hostile Indians, and she undertook the construction of a chapel dedicated to Notre-Dame de Bon Secours.

Convinced of the importance of the family in the building of this new country, and perceiving the significance of the role to be exercised by women, she devoted herself to the task of preparing those whose vocation it would be to preside in a home.

In , in a stable which had been given to her by the governor for her use, she opened the first school in Montreal. She also organized an extern Congregation, patterned after the one which she had known in Troyes but adapted to the actual needs. In this way, she could respond to the needs of the women and young girls on whom much depended as far as the instruction of children was concerned. In , she began receiving girls who were recommended by "les cures" in France, or endowed by the King, to come to establish homes in Montreal, and she became a real mother to them.

Thus were initiated a school system and a network of social services which gradually extended through the whole country, and which led people to refer to Marguerite as "Mother of the Colony".