As a massive fundraising campaign to renovate La Verendrye hospital here and the Emo Health Centre continues full tilt, the group that helped lay the first bricks are quietly leaving town.
Sister Marguerite Forest, 68, and Sister Cecile Maurice, 86, will be moving out of their home on 210 Armit Ave. on Aug. 15 and heading to Manitoba–leaving Fort Frances without the presence of the Grey Nuns for the first time in 60 years.
“Dr. O’Donnell was here and he wanted the sisters to come here because there was just a little Red Cross in Emo,” Sister Cecile recalled.
The small Red Cross building, and two doctors who made house calls, was all the health care the district had to offer until the Grey Nuns, officially known as the Sisters of Charity, arrived from Montreal to help out.
After their arrival in 1940, the order immediately began to look into building a hospital for the area and within a year, construction of La Verendrye was underway.
“We opened in ’41 and I came in ’43,” said Sister Cecile, who worked as a registered nurse in the hospital during World War II. “We had prisoners of war here and they had them working in the mill camps and when they were ill, they would come in.”
The prisoners would come in with small ailments, such as cuts on their feet, to avoid the work and relax under the nuns’ care.
The hospital had up to 50 beds at one point and, at its peak, 12-15 Sisters of Charity were running it. The order sold the hospital in 1975 but the nuns continued to serve in the community at the hospital and assisting shut-ins, the homeless, seniors, and many others.
Sisters Cecile and Marguerite remain modest but will admit they will miss the many people they’ve met throughout the community.
“It’s hard because we know the people and they’ve been nice to us,” said Sister Marguerite, who will continue to help those in need in St. Anne, Man.
“We know a lot of people, a lot of those babies who were born when we were here are now grandparents,” added Sister Cecile, who will be retired by the order in a pastoral residence in Winnipeg.
But she doesn’t plan to relax, saying she will continue to help out the needy as long as she is able-bodied.
The two sisters, who have lived together for 14 years, will be a half-hour drive from one another and plan to keep in touch.
“Sister Marguerite likes to drive,” Sister Cecile smiled.
St. Mary’s Church will host a ‘come and go’ next Thursday (July 20) from 7-9 p.m. to thank the sisters for their support over the years.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
