18 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



further into the wilderness, followed Maisonneiive to the founding of 

 ]\Iontreal, and left the Ursulines of Quebec almost penniless in their 

 half-finished building. Even M. de Bemières answered La Mère Marie's 

 appeal by advising her to send away her pupils and workmen, give up 

 everything and come home, unless Providence should raise up a second 

 benefactress. However, she immediately wrote back to say that having 

 once put her hand to the heavenly task she would never give it up alive. 

 She kept her Indian pupils, urged on her workmen, and, in every detail 

 of duty and leadership, plainly showed how fully confident she was that 

 Canada was only at the beginning of assured success, instead of at the 

 end of utter failure. 



After an absence of eighteen months Madame de la Peltrie came 

 back, never again to leave Quebec. She found the new convent inhabited, 

 the school open, and La Mère Marie as full of detennined hope as ever. 

 There was little comfort in the new home, a building 93 feet long and 

 28 feet wide. Two open fires barely took the frost out of the air — stoves 

 were only introduced twenty-six years later. Yet the devoted life went 

 on with increasing vigour. New nuns came out: some from the mother- 

 house at Tours ; another from Ploërmel, in the Breton " Land of Par- 

 dons." In 1648 the convent was at last finished, after seven years of 

 hard work and much anxiety from lack of funds. 



Meanwhile, Quebec grew slowly: half mission, half trading post, 

 and whoUy bureaucratic. On New Year's Eve, in 1646, the first play 

 performed in Canada, Corneille's Le Cid, was given before the Governor 

 and the Jesuit Faithers. Two years later the Govemor-in-Council ,ap- 

 pointed Jacques Boisdon — ^bibulous cognomen ! — first and sole innkeeper, 

 on the following conditions: — "That the said Jacques Boisdon settles 

 in the square in front of the ichurch, so that the people may go in to warm 

 themselves, and that he keeps nobody in his house during High Mass, 

 sermons, catechism or vespers." In 1663, the population had increased 

 to 500 souls, of whom 150 belonged to the religious communities. 



The tliirteen disastrous years from 1650 to 1663 were the nadir 

 of Canada's fortunes. More than once the colony nearly lost its flickering 

 life altogether. The Iroquois scourged the land like a plague. Not a 

 man was safe outeide a fort. All that were left of the once powerful 

 Hurons crouched miserably under the protection of Quebec. La Mère 

 Marie was ever foremost in succouring them and bringing their children 

 into her school. She took lessons herself in Huron from Father Bressani, 

 who had escaped death at- the hands of the Iroquois as by a miracle, after 

 havino- suffered the extremity of torture. But, just as her classes were 

 well established, the convent was burnt to the ground. The nuns hardly 

 escaped with their lives, running out barefooted and half-clad into the 



