Élisabeth Bruyère

Who was Élisabeth Bruyère?

Élisabeth Bruyère or Bruguier was the founder of the Sisters of Charity of Bytown and opened the first hospital there and the first bilingual school in Ontario.

She was born Élisabeth Bruguier in L'Assomption in Lower Canada in 1818. Daughter of Jean Baptiste Charles Bruguier and Sophie Mercier.

In 1839, she joined the Sisters of Charity of the Hôpital Général of Montreal, also known as the Grey Nuns.

In 1845, she was asked to set up a community of the Sisters of Charity at Bytown. With three other Grey Nuns, she established Roman Catholic schools, hospitals and orphanages there. In 1854, the community in Bytown became independent of Montreal.

Although the Sisters of Charity cared for people of every religious denomination during the typhus outbreak in 1847, a Protestant General Hospital, later the Ottawa Civic Hospital, was opened in 1850. The Sisters of Charity were also responsible from 1870 to 2001 of the school which became today the Collège Saint-Joseph de Hull in Gatineau, the city's girl school and one of two private secondary institutions.

The community opened other houses in Ontario, Quebec and New York state. The hospital opened in Bytown later became the Ottawa General Hospital. The Sisters of Charity also established facilities for the aged, opening the St. Charles Old Age Hospice, later the Residence Saint-Louis.