At Home and Abroad

In 1847, Élisabeth Bruyère, the 29 year old superior of the Bytown Sisters of Charity, took extraordinary action at great personal risk to care for the Irish Famine refugees streaming into Bytown (Ottawa). During the typhus epidemic she set up a temporary hospital to care for the sick, saving countless lives. Imperial and Colonial government authorities viewed the Irish famine victims with contempt; Bruyère treated them with compassion. Her work was the foundation of Ottawa’s public health system. Her extraordinary legacy deserves to be better known 175 years after these events