Jeanne Mance

Jeanne Mance (1606 to 1673) was a French lay nurse and settler of New France who founded the first hospital in Montreal. Born in Langres to a family of legal professionals, she learned nursing skills by tending the sick and wounded during the Thirty Years War and repeated outbreaks of plague, and she chose neither marriage nor a religious order. At the age of thirty-four she felt a call to go to New France and joined the Societe Notre-Dame de Montreal. She sailed from La Rochelle in May 1641, wintered at Quebec, and in spring 1642 reached the island of Montreal with Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, where the city was founded on 17 May 1642. She first ran a hospital from her home, then opened the Hotel-Dieu de Montreal in 1645 with a donation from Angelique Bullion. She returned twice to France to seek funds, and in 1657 she recruited three hospital sisters of Saint-Joseph to help direct the hospital.