The community of Sisters of Providence, or, more accurately, Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor, was founded in Montreal, Canada, by Bishop Ignace Bourget and Madame Jean Baptiste Gamelin, 25 March, 1843. After the deaths of her husband and three children, Madame Gamelin developed a particular devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows, whose commemoration remains the congregation's principal feast. With the approbation of the religious and civil authorities Madame Gamelin, a childless widow, who had for some time been sheltering in her own house a number of infirm and poor old women. After a voyage to Europe Bishop Bourget wished to bring to Montreal some French Sisters of Charity, but the project came to nothing, and he decided to appeal to the young women of his own diocese. On 25 March, 1843, in the chapel of the first asylum in Montreal seven sisters received the religious habit at his hands. Mother Gamelin became the first Superior of the Congregation. The new institution developed rapidly. Its object is to provide for the poor and sick spiritual and temporal relief, to shelter children and the aged, to visit the homes of the poor and the ill, to shelter the infirm and the homeless, to maintain dispensaries for the needy, and to instruct the young. They opened a shelter for Irish orphans of typhus and took charge of a school for girls. In 1854, at the invitation of Louis de Goesbriand, Bishop of Burlington, the sisters opened St. Joseph Orphanage. In 1856 Augustin-Magloire Blanchet, the bishop of the new Diocese of Nesqually, approached the Sisters of Providence in Montreal, seeking their assistance for his diocese in the Pacific Northwest Territories of the United States. Mother Joseph Pariseau was chosen to lead four companions as missionaries to that region. Accompanied by the bishop, they spent over a month traveling by train from Montreal, arriving on the 8 December of that year. They settled in Vancouver, Washington and established a convent-school and shortly thereafter St. Joseph Hospital, which would develop into PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center. She went on to design and build more than 30 hospitals, schools, orphanages and libraries across British Columbia, Washington, Montana, Idaho and Oregon.. For her contributions to the development of that region, she was honored by the State of Washington as one of the two people allowed to represent it in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C. The Sisters of Providence of Montreal were instrumental in helping to establish:
The rule of the Institute of Providence was definitively approved by Leo XIII 12 September, 1900.
Present day
"We believe that the loving presence of God watches over the entire universe and remains attentive to the needs of all, active in us and through us. This is what we call Providence." The congregation is a member of the Women of Providence in Collaboration. Providence Health & Services was established by the Sisters.
