The Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul operated St. Vincent de Paul Hospital in Brockville, Ontario from 1887 to 2006, and taught at boys at St. Francis Xavier School from 1899 to 1946.
St. Vincent de Paul Hospital (1887-2006)
In 1887, a railway accident alerted Brockville to the need for emergency facilities as the nearest hospital was in Kingston, eighty kilometers away. As a result of that accident, Archbishop Cleary of the Archdiocese of Kingston asked the Sisters of Providence to found a hospital in Brockville.
In November of 1887, St. Vincent de Paul Hospital, Brockville opened to provide general care to the sick in Brockville and surrounding area. The hospital originally had 12 beds, 7 doctors and 17 nurses and was located in a house on Schofield Hill.
Five years later the hospital had outgrown the Schofield Hill location and the hospital moved to 42 Garden Street, which was the former convent of the Congregation of Notre Dame. A year later, the Ladies’ Hospital Auxiliary was founded in 1893. Over time several additions to the hospital were constructed, beginning with a new wing in 1896 that included a surgical unit and obstetrics ward and brought the total number of patient beds to 60. Another wing was built in 1912, a nurses’ residence in 1924, a new surgical unit in 1948, and a four story wing in 1958. In 1968, the only remaining section of the original hospital was demolished and replaced with a four-storey addition, which included new operating room facilities, intensive care unit and service areas.
Rev. Dean Murray came to Brockville in 1901 to take over supervision at the hospital. He was diligent and hardworking and insisted on perfection in every aspect. In pursuit of thoroughness, Rev. Murray set up a Training School for Nurses in 1904. Later that year, he hired Miss Mary Cleary, a graduate of Chicago’s Mercy Hospital, to run the facility. The first class comprising of twelve Sisters graduated in 1906. That same year, recent graduate Sister Mary Eulalia took over as superintendent of the nursing school. During her twelve years with the training facility, Sister Mary Eulalia earned a reputation as an excellent organizer and disciplinarian. The training school ran for more than forty years until government regulations in 1946, restricted nurses’ training schools to larger hospitals.
The training school reopened in 1950 to train Nursing Assistants. The School for Certified Nursing Assistants operated at St. Vincent De Paul Hospital from 1950 until 1972. In 1973 when all nursing assistant training classes were moved to a regional centre, St. Vincent de Paul Hospital continued to be involved in education as students of radiology from Kingston came to the hospital to receive practical training. In addition, the hospital provided clinical experience for students in the diploma nursing and nursing assistant programs at St. Lawrence College in Brockville. Over the course of this history of the training school 45 Sisters of Providence graduated as Registered Nurses or Certified Nursing Assistants from St. Vincent’s.
In 1979, palliative care service was introduced to St. Vincent de Paul Hospital and its focus was to help dying patients spend their final days in comfort. In 1996, St. Vincent de Paul Hospital Brockville became part of Providence Continuing Care Centre and the Sisters moved out of their hospital residence into apartment residences. Acute care services ended at St. Vincent de Paul Hospital in 1998 and the hospital focused on complex continuing care and rehabilitation services. St. Vincent de Paul Hospital was transferred to Brockville General Hospital in 2006.
From 1887 to 2006, 32 Sisters served on the governing board of St. Vincent de Paul Hospital. For 100 years, from 1887 to 1987, the hospital administrator was a Sister of Providence and four of these administrators later became General Superiors of the congregation. The last Sister of Providence to serve in the hospital left Brockville in 2000. From 1887 to 2000, approximately 300 sisters served in Brockville, at St. Vincent de Paul Hospital, as teachers at St. Francis Xavier School and in parish ministry.
The Catholic Health Alliance of Canada has been digitizing books celebrating Catholic hospitals in Canada as part of their Catholic Hospitals Digital History Book Collection. Please take a look at the following digitized booklets for St. Vincent de Paul Hospital:
Other Ministries
In 1899 the Sisters of Providence were asked by the parish priest to take over teaching the boys in St. Francis Xavier School. The girls were taught by the Congregation of Notre Dame. The Sisters of Providence taught the boys until 1946, when the boys’ and girls’ schools were merged into a co-ed school and run by the Congregation of Notre Dame. Thirty-nine Sisters of Providence taught boys at St. Francis Xavier School from 1899 to 1946.