Agnès-Marie Valois

Agnès-Marie Valois (1914 to 2018), known as Sister Agnès-Marie, was a French Augustinian religious sister and nurse born in Rouen. She entered the convent of the Canonesses of St. Augustine at the Hôtel-Dieu de Rouen in 1936, worked in its military ward and then in surgery, where she specialised in anaesthesia, and took her solemn vows in 1941. During the failed Allied raid on Dieppe on 19 August 1942 she was one of ten Augustinian nurses who cared for the wounded, first on the beach and then at the Hôtel-Dieu, and she became known to Canadian veterans as the Angel of Dieppe. A veteran recalled that she treated the injured according to need rather than nationality. After the war she became a healthcare administrator, was honoured by France and Canada, including the Legion of Honour, and died at the age of 103.