BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVIST Those of us who live in cities, take for granted that our water is provided by the city and not by a private corporation. This was not always the case in Kingston. According to the Kingston Pumphouse Museum website, the Kingston Water Works was owned by a private corporation from 1849 to 1887 when it was purchased by the City of Kingston. In 1889 the City replaced half of the pipes in Kingston with larger pipes...

BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVIST The School of Nursing at Providence Hospital in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan was founded in 1917 by Sister Mary Raphael McCann. There were 14 students in the first class. Conditions were crowded and instruction was carried on by the doctors as they went about visiting their patients. The following September, when the new hospital opened on Lillooet Street, classrooms were on the ground floor and living accommodation...

BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVIST Mother Mary Clement was General Superior from July 1927 to July 1930. She wrote a letter to all the Sisters for Lent in 1930 that was sent to all the convents and missions. Here are a few extracts: Dear Sister Superior and Sisters:- I notice that all the Sisters are writing to their loved ones, so I thought I would do like-wise. For many reasons, my letter must be short, and for this, I know you will pardon me....

BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVIST Many photographs in the Archives do not have dates, but we can try to use clues in the photographs themselves to establish a date range. I can often narrow down the dates of photographs of Sisters based on what type of habit the Sisters in the photograph are wearing, but this process of using clues in the photographs also works with buildings. When I look at photographs of buildings, I look for architectural...

BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVISTMuriel Black entered the Sisters of Providence as a postulant in August 1950 and received the Habit in March 1951. Sister Black made first profession in August 1952 taking the religious name Sister Stella Maris. As a novice, Sister Black, as she was known in the novitiate, wrote several humorous articles for the Guardian magazine about life as a novice. The Guardian was a children’s magazine published monthly by...

BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVIST   Sister Mary Anita taught Grade 7 Home Economics from 1954 to 1958 at St. Michael’s Academy in Belleville, Ontario. Here are a few photos of her students during those years.

A vintage postcard of the Varuna, a passenger steamboat that plied the Bay of Quinte from 1880 to the 1920s.BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVIST A lovely summer excursion by two Sisters in Trenton to Lake on the Mountain near Picton, as described in the Annals of St. Peter’s Convent, Trenton: August 29, 1906 - Upon a kind invitation extended by Miss L. Coleman to Sister Superior and Sister M. Stanislaus some weeks ago, the latter, accompanied by...

Postcard of Mill Street, Deseronto, ca.1900. Courtesy of the Deseronto Archives.BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVIST The COVID-19 crisis has been likened to the 1918 Flu epidemic; yet, if we look in the Archives there are also many similarities with smaller localized epidemics of the past. In September 1879, the Sisters of Providence were asked to nurse smallpox patients in Mill Point (later renamed Deseronto). Here is an abridged extract from the...

BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVIST St. Michael’s Band, a rhythm band, was formed in 1934 in Belleville by Sister Mary Mercedes. The students were originally recruited from Grade 1 at St. Michael’s Academy and many of the same children stayed in the band into their high school years. The band played for the King George V and Queen Elizabeth (who we know as the Queen mother) outside St. Mary’s Cathedral during the royal visit to Kingston in 1939....