Remarkable Women

Jeanne Mance

Born in Langres, France, in 1606, Jeanne Mance was a devout Catholic who involved herself in charity work. In 1641 she joined the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal, an association dedicated to the creation of a Catholic colony in Canada.

Financially supported by a rich widow, Madame de Bullion, she sailed for New France in 1642 with French military officer Paul de Chomeday, Sieur de Maisonneuve, and about 150 settlers.

They founded Ville-Marie on the island of Montreal during a period of intense conflict with the Six Nations Confederacy, whose homeland was being colonized by the French.

In Montreal, Mance cared for the sick and the wounded and became the first lay nurse in Canada, founding the Hotel-Dieu, Montreal’s first hospital.

Yet Mance’s contributions to Montreal went far beyond providing health care. In 1650, she convinced Maisonneuve to return to France to recruit new settlers, 177 of whom arrived in 1653 — an act that essentially saved the dwindling colony (only 50 people were left of the original 150).

In 1658, Mance herself went back to France and recruited les Religieuses Hospitalières de Saint-Joseph, a religious order devoted to the care of the sick, to work at her hospital.

She died in Montreal in 1673, still directing the Hôtel-Dieu. In 2012, Mance was officially acknowledged by Montreal’s city council as a co-founder of the city, along with Maisonneuve.

Irma LeVasseur

Born in 1877 in Quebec City to a family of artists, Irma LeVasseur saw her two younger brothers die in infancy, which was a common occurrence at a time when one child out of four did not live past a year.

The tragedies spurred her toward a career as a doctor — but at the time Canadian universities refused to accept women into their medical schools.

Undaunted, LeVasseur moved to Minnesota, where in six years she completed her medical training, specializing in pediatrics.

In 1900, LeVasseur returned to Québec but was refused a medical licence. It would take another three years — and the passing of a private member’s bill at the provincial legislature — before she was finally certified by Quebec’s college of physicians and surgeons.

During the delay, she practised in the United States, and following her certification in Quebec, LeVasseur travelled to Europe for further studies. Returning in 1908, she helped to found Montreal’s Hôpital Ste-Justine for children.

At the outbreak of the First World War, LeVasseur headed overseas to treat Allied troops, and in 1915 she journeyed to Serbia, where she cared for thousands of soldiers.

In 1922, she founded the Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus in Quebec City; she founded a clinic for children in 1927, and, later, a nursing school.

Sadly, her accomplishments were largely forgotten, and she died in 1964 in relative obscurity. Today, however, LeVasseur’s recognized as a champion for women in the medical profession and for children’s health and welfare.

Carrie Matilda Derick

Born in Clarenceville, Quebec, in 1862, Carrie Matilda Derick took the unusual step, for a woman at the time, of pursuing studies in biology after obtaining her teaching licence for l’École normale de Montréal.

She went on to study at McGill University, at Harvard, at the Royal College of Science in London, England, and at the University of Bonn in Germany.

In 1891 she became the first woman to achieve a staff teaching position at McGill University, working as a demonstrator. She became a lecturer of comparative morphology and genetics, then an assistant professor.

In that position Derick created a course called “Evolution and Genetics,” which made her a pioneer; at the time, evolution was still controversial, and genetics was a completely new field of study.

Derick published many peer-reviewed articles in the field of botany and earned respect among scientists around the world as well as a mention in the American Men of Science, published in 1910.

She was named professor emeritus in 1929, just before leaving McGill for reasons of health.

In addition to her demanding career as a scientist and a teacher, Derick also immersed herself in various social causes.

She promoted women’s suffrage and became a member of organizations such as the Local Council of Women in Montreal, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Council of Education, the Federation of University Women of Canada, the Montreal Folklore Society, and many others. Derick died in 1941.

Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott

Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott had a rough start in life: Her father left home for the United States right after her birth in 1868, and her mother died of tuberculosis the following year.

Maude and her sister Frances were subsequently raised by their maternal grandmother.

Abbott was a good student, and in 1885 she earned a scholarship to McGill University. She graduated in 1890 with a bachelor of arts degree and hoped to attend McGill’s medical school, but the university barred women from the faculty.

Instead, she attended Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec, graduating with a medical degree in 1894.

After three years of further study in Europe, Abbott returned to Montreal, where she opened a health clinic for women and children. It was at this time that she began studying heart disease, especially in newborns.

In 1898, she became curator of the McGill Medical Museum and in the early 1900s, she published the first articles written by a woman in the Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology of Great Britain.

By this time, Abbott was a world-renowned expert regarding heart defects in children. In 1910, McGill awarded her an honorary degree in medicine and appointed her as a lecturer in pathology — despite maintaining its men-only medical school.

During her long and diverse career, Abbott published more than 140 articles on topics ranging from heart diseases to the history of medicine, including the important 1936 monograph Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease.

In 1940, she suffered a stroke. A few months after her death, Paul Dudley White, an eminent American cardiologist, called Abbott “the world authority on congenital heart diseases.”