Elisabeth Bruyere

Mother of Ottawa

Elisabeth Bruyere was born on March 19, 1818, the feast of Saint Joseph, in the village of L’Assomption, near Montreal, in what was then Lower Canada. At the age of six, she lost her beloved father, and the poverty that followed shaped her lifelong compassion for the suffering. In 1839, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Montreal, founded by Saint Marguerite d’Youville, and made her first profession on May 31, 1841, at the age of twenty-three.

In February 1845, at just twenty-six years old, Mother Bruyere was sent to Bytown (the future city of Ottawa) with three companions and two young women in formation. The raw lumber town on the banks of the Ottawa River was poor, rough, and desperately in need of basic social services. Within five months of her arrival, this young nun had established schools for both English and French speaking children, a hospital, a home for the poor, and organized charitable services for the most destitute inhabitants. She opened the first bilingual school in Ontario’s history.

The typhus epidemic of 1847 and 1848 was a crucible of heroism for the young community. With no other medical workers available, Mother Bruyere and her sisters cared for more than 600 patients sent to them by Dr. Edward Van Cortlandt, saving approximately 475 lives. She went on to establish the General Hospital of Ottawa, laying the foundation for modern health care in the Canadian capital.

Mother Bruyere directed the congregation for thirty-one years. By the time of her death on April 5, 1876, at age fifty-eight, the community had grown to ninety-eight members and had opened some twenty-five houses across Ontario, Quebec, and New York State. Her cause for canonization was formally accepted by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in 1983, and on April 14, 2018, Pope Francis recognized her heroic virtues and declared her Venerable.

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