“The mouth smiles

while the heart sheds tears”:

A Grey Nun’s care of the sick at a boarding school
on the Mackenzie River
1916-18
Walter Vanast McGill

Draft 6. May 10, 2011

Corrections and Suggestions invited.

wvanast@videotron.ca

walter.vanast@mcgill.ca

What was it like to be a religious sister at a native boarding school early the last century, when the
prevalence of tuberculosis in native communities soared and many children died? To glimpse an answer,
this story looks at lines written by Sister Superior Sainte Eugénie in the diary of the Grey Nun establishment
(a residential school, home for orphans, and infirmary) at distant Fort Providence on the Mackenzie.
Given her vow to serve God no matter how hard the task, Sister Eugénie could show no distress in
diary entries. And as head of the local nuns she had to seem serene, acknowledge Heaven’s will, and focus
on the good. Yet her anguish was such it needed release, and metaphor offered the means.
Time ran short as she directed the raising of orphans, boarding of students, feeding of clerics, and
teaching at the school. She functioned as physician to the region, made housecalls in the village, saw
outpatients at the convent, admitted serious cases, and filled the needs of Dene Indians when several times a
year they came to the fort. In spring when boats arrived from the South and again in winter when the mail
sled passed through, a virus always came with them , vastly increasing her work.
In early 1916, the sister could hardly keep up. Tuberculous students needed extra watching, the
chaplain fell ill, a wounded trapper required assistance, and many families at Fort Providence had caught the
flu. All needed visits. Helping keep up her spirits was Father Duchaussois, who had come from France to
write a book about the nuns, but when he left in March she felt it acutely. As a poet had said, “Parting is a
little death.”
 When days later a young girl, Marie-Adèle, passed away, she remembered that Chateaubriand called
suffering a form of prayer. “One feels the need to fall on one's knees when one is unhappy,” she paraphrased
while asking for grace and forgiveness.
In April priests and brothers caught another flu, Indians often asked for pills, and an elderly native
woman, deaf, blind, and ill, needed admission. House-calls continued, as did the watch over ailing students.
It was just then, as happened each year before Easter (as a reminder of Christ's death on the cross) that the
mission bell ceased ringing. "We find ourselves in the silent week,” the sister wrote, as the absent peals
matched the lack of joy in her heart.
Two tuberculous girls, Marie-Anne and Thérèse, were put outside in a tent when the weather
warmed, but sunlight did not help and the latter bled from the lungs. Soon they and David, a teenager
confined to bed, received the last rites. "Life is full of sadness,” the hard-pressed nun put to pen as clouds
moved in, “yet no one wants to leave it." The comment referred as much to her own sombre thoughts as to
her young patients.
While rain pelted windows and prevented sleep Sister Eugénie thought of the onslaught of illness
inside. Then, recalling Saint Thérèse’s description of life as but “a night of storms spent in a bad inn," she
strained for a positive note: “ When one finds in that lodging not only friends but obedient, pious, and
loving children, it just isn't possible to complain of streaks of lightning, bolts of thunder, and blackened
skies."
A fine morning brought no cheer, for like other pleasant things it would "pass too soon." The next
day Thérèse and David passed away. "My God!" she cried while forcing herself to see a silver lining, "Since
we must witness such deaths, how good it is—how necessary it is—to believe that one day we will see them
again in another life." Shortly after, dogs killed the cat she much loved.
After consumption showed on June 26 in two small children, Marie-Céline and Augustin, the nun
could no longer deny her pain, though she kept her outward composure. "When the mouth smiles," she
recalled a saying, "the soul is shedding tears." Still, the crises continued.
Grasshoppers destroyed the vegetables, ailing Oblates required care, boats brought a nasty cold,
ailing Indians clamoured for help, and students were so sick with a virus “as to evoke pity." The superior,
herself affected, felt sick both in body and heart.
An outdoor religious procession brought no help from God as within hours little Jean, who had been
scheduled to go home, showed signs of tuberculous peritonitis. "Again, my Lord!" was the sister's cry when
he passed away. Catching herself, she added "Thy will be done." That evening Augustin declined some
more and Sister Yves, a convent mainstay, developed abdominal cramps.
The superior could take no more and defiance, though in muted terms, marked words to her maker:
“My God, we are almost tempted to say ‘It is too much all at once.’” She longed to tell the mother superior
of all the Mackenzie District of the endless tests of illness and death—it would be like “pouring the
overflow into another vessel.” But although the Northland Trader arrived as expected, the mother was not
on board. Augustin died days later.
Beset by grief, Sister Eugénie tried to think of rewards. “To dry a tear, to trigger a smile,” she
reminded herself, “those are pleasures one can readily procure.” But she felt increasing isolation. Not only
was she far from her family in Québec, she had wandered from trust in God. When a priest spoke of
Christ’s healing of the lepers, she thought of her ailing faith. "We too, O Jesus," said her prayer, " want to
be healed. We want to return to the resolutions of our days of fervour."
Her gloom deepened, in part because of an encounter with a favourite former student who had
become mentally ill. “Alas,” she confided to the diary, “nothing offers peace, nor is there anything of which
one can be certain.”
For weeks migrating birds cried to the nun to come with them. "I have lost my wings," she
lamented, "and cannot fly along." How fortunate the air-borne travelers were to have all that air and light
while those below faced exile. She envied the ease with which they packed—they had "neither suitcases nor
baggage," and God paid their hotel. The fall's single mail in late November brought three letters, all for
another nun.
At the onset of winter’s darkest month, two sick youngsters, Alphonse and Lazare, rapidly sank.
"Must we really open still more graves?" was the sister's angry response. But she allowed that God had
rules. "My Lord," she intoned, "it is true that you measure each person for a cradle, a life, and a tomb." The
boys, such reasoning implied, had grown to the pre-ordained length of their coffins, and her prayers could
not change the course of events.
When Alphonse left this world, the sister chose to be even closer to ailing youngsters, so they could
receive the warmest, most constant of care. Like a mother hen protecting her brood underwing, she placed
Lazare in a bed beside her own, where he continued the "gentle" voyage downward. Then one morning he
told her to stop fussing over him and to "run to breakfast" as it was already late—when she returned, he was
breathing his last. "We don't want to complain," the sister told her Lord, "but we know you are a good father,
so please listen to our sighs and give us the grace of resignation." What she really meant was "Please stop
the killing."
Yet no lament flowed from her pen when little Joseph, who next stayed by her bed, left this world.
Having got some rest, she was able to keep anger in check. No other patient lay seriously ill, housecalls had
dwindled, and the Indians' visit to the fort had easily passed.
Other factors also helped. It was the golden anniversary of the nuns' arrival at Fort Providence and
to mark the event, the head of the Grey Nun order paid a visit from Montreal. Ceremonies, banquets, and
entertainment by the children followed.
 More than ever, Sister Eugénie felt ties to Margaret d'Youville, her order’s founder, on whose
birthday the nuns lit a candle by her statue in their parlour. The flame, she felt, showed what was foremost in
all the nuns’ minds: to work as hard as they could under the mother’s gaze till one day they could join her in
heaven.
That same year a new Grey Nun hospital downriver at Fort Simpson reduced demands on the
superior’s time. Now when in summer sisters gathered students along the Mackenzie they examined each
one for tuberculosis, and left those openly infected at the more northerly post. Children at Fort Providence
who needed extra care were sent there as well.
Such transfers, however, could not take place in winter, as the distance prohibited a sick child’s
travel by dogsled. Besides, there was no benefit in sending hopeless cases to another site. Ailing youngsters,
as a result, remained a presence at the Fort Providence school and 1918 brought further deaths. But the
sister felt less stress than in the years before.
Though Pierre Andrew passed away on March 9, Émile on July 20, and Marguérite seemed about to
follow, the sister maintained her peace and determined to live up to her duties. Helping her in that task was
a sermon by Father Leguen that deeply touched her as he urged emulation of the Virgin Mary’s humility,
purity, and obedience during Archangel Gabriel’s visit.
As well, a terrible event in Montreal put the convent’s problems in perspective. Fire at a Grey Nun
building had killed fifty infants and compared to that toll, burials at the school that year were few. Yet the
sister’s comment that "Life escapes painfully, drop by drop," shows they still touched her.
The sister performed well when a virus once again swept the region, the "dear little baby" of a
former student passed away, and Sister Yves had a recurrence of cramps. When Elisabeth Etchi, a petite,
showed signs of consumption, the superior put the girl by her bed.
Elisabeth rarely responded to smiles, but one day giggled at length and made all the nuns laugh as
she donned the superior's headdress, cross, and dark--rimmed glasses, which she put low down on her nose.
Insisting she was in charge and demanding someone bring “a sack of flour,” she suddenly in the midst of
the gaiety had a haemorrhage that ended her life.
No bitter note appeared in Sister Eugénie's journal, for she had learned to accept death even as she
brought it close. The heart-rending loss brought neither despair nor objection. She continued to smile as was
her duty, and her diary in subsequent months told of joyful events.
In June a nun caused mirth when after a long trip she kissed the convent floor to show her
happiness at being back. In October the sisters enjoyed an evening of banter—it was the king's birthday, and
a nun’s impersonation of Edward VII had them roar. Four weeks later Sister Yves at a party to celebrate her
recovery made them laugh so hard it hurt.
 As December drew to a close, the superior learned that war in Europe had ended, but the news was
not all good. Spanish Flu had killed thousands and a number of close acquaintances, nuns in Montreal, had
succumbed. Sweeping west, the virus was sure to reach the Mackenzie. Yet given what had happened at the
convent the past three years, and the care she had given to so many dying infants, Sister Eugénie faced the
threat with utter calm, though of the darkest kind, as before a storm. If she must pass through another test,
that was part of her lot—and should she cease to be, little would be lost.
Reflecting on New Year’s eve about the past and future, Sister Eugénie saw how little of either she
knew: "What remains of the one? What do we possess of the other? Nothing. Here, a few memories, there
a few hopes carried off one by one, washed away in time. A fading day, a closing night—life is but a
mixture of the two."