Canada Guide
Québec City
Couvent des Ursulines
Opening time: May– Sept Tues– Sat 10am– noon & 1–5pm, Sun 1–5pm; Oct– April Tues– Sun 1–4.30pm
Telephone: 418/694-0694
Website: www.museocapitale.qc.ca/014.htm
Price: $6
Heading south along rue des Jardins brings you to the narrow rue Donnacona, where a sculptured hand holding a quill – a monument to the women who, since 1639, have dedicated their lives to teaching young Québecois – rests on a pedestal. It seems to point the way to the Couvent des Ursulines, built by a tiny group of Ursuline nuns who arrived in Québec in 1639 calling themselves "the Amazons of God in Canada".
The Ursulines' first mother superior, Marie Guyart de l'Incarnation, was widowed at age 19 and left her son with family when she entered the Ursulines de Tours monastery twelve years later. Her letters to him once she finally made it to Québec give some sharp insights into the early days of the city: "It would be hard to live here an hour without having the hands protected and without being well covered. Although the beds are covered well with quilts or blankets, scarcely can one keep warm when lying on them." Her likeness can be seen in a posthumous portrait attributed to Pommier in the interesting little museum, housed in the former home of one of the first nuns.
Marie de l'Incarnation's remains are entombed in the oratory adjoining the chapel (May– Oct Tues– Sat 10– noon & 1pm–5pm, Sun 1pm–5pm; free), rebuilt in 1902 but retaining the sumptuous early eighteenth-century altar and sculptures by Pierre-Noël Levasseur. The collection of seventeenth and eighteenth-century paintings were acquired from post-Revolution France in the 1820s.