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The Oldest All Girls School in North America
Finely executed school girl atlas executed by Yvonne Labbe, who was a student at the Monastere des Ursulines in Stansead, Canada, 1911-12.
One interesting feature of the work is that on the Stanstead map, the rail lines and local train stations are noted.
The Ursuline Monsteries of Canada date back to 1639. The Ursuline Sisters were the first Catholic nuns to land in the New World. The history of the Ursulines in Quebec begins on August 1, 1639, when its first members landed in Canada. The monastery was established under the leadership of Mother (now Saint) Marie of the Incarnation (1599–1672), an Ursuline nun of the monastery in Tours, and Madame Marie-Madeline de Chauvigny de la Peltrie (1603–1671), a rich widow from Alençon in Normandy. The letters patent sanctioning the foundation issued by King Louis XIII are dated 1639.
When they arrived in the summer of 1639, the nuns studied the languages of the native peoples and then began to educate the native children. They taught reading and writing as well as needlework, embroidery, drawing and other domestic arts. After three years spent in the Lower Town of Quebec City, the nuns moved to a new monastery built on ground ceded to them by the Company of New France. Their first pupils were Indian girls, with whom they succeeded better than the Jesuits with their native boys.
From the earliest times, its fourth vow was to teach girls. Over time, the original Quebec Monastery expanded and founded new communities at Three Rivers in 1697, Roberval in 1882, Stanstead in 1884, and Rimouski, with a normal school, in 1906, besides sending missionaries to New Orleans in 1822, Charlestown (Boston) in 1824, Galveston in 1849 and Montana in 1893.
The Ursuline Monastery in Quebec operated from 1884 until 2004,
