http:\/\/www.rhsj.org\/en\/<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Montreal, Sept 9, 2017<\/p>\n
Walking up towards Mount Royal on Pine avenue I\u2019m enjoying one of those beautiful September afternoons in Montreal. Jean-Pierre and I opened the heavy door to a \u00a0contemporary building dwarfed by the huge hospital complex surrounding it. We are in the Mus\u00e9e des hospitali\u00e8res de l\u2019H\u00f4tel Dieu de Montr\u00e9al.<\/p>\n
I had no idea what lay inside but discovered a wonderfully curated collection of artifacts dating from the beginning of the 17th century in Montreal.<\/p>\n
It tells the story of Montreal through the religious prism that colored every aspect of daily life at the time. From the mystic lifelong vision that motivated the founder who never left France, to the cloistered nuns who guaranteed its success over the centuries.<\/p>\n
The story is made real in very tangible ways with artifacts such as pages from the logbooks, menus, and period signage. \u00a0The cloister is particularly well represented as I approach the inaccessible world behind the trellis through which the nuns were allowed only rare contact with the outside world.<\/p>\n
As I step through that trellis I\u2019m carried back in time.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m an infatuated young bride of Jesus discovering the daily rituals of my cloistered lifetime ahead. I\u2019m greeted by a young nun, presented with a uniform, a Bible, a rule book, a tiny room. The silent dining, the constant prayer, the pervasive presence of religious icons will conspire to keep the vision alive: you\u2019re married to Jesus and are doing his bidding.<\/p>\n
I walk up the pharmacy, behind a beautiful curved counter, where I\u2019ll be working standing in front of dozens of apothecary jars preparing prescriptions.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m snapped out of my daydream by the recipes and labels in front of me. \u00a0This is medicine 100 years ago, these are some of the treatments: cupping therapy, ointments, herbs. This place is a testament to the human body\u2019s persistent and astonishing ability to heal itself. But then I\u2019m reminded that this is a hospice for the destitute not a hospital with state-of-the-art period medicine.<\/p>\n
I drift through time as we follow the guide through the halls of this amazing Museum and I wake up in a ward somewhere in the 20th century of my youth. Names and places take on a familiar ring now, such as McGill University Hospital Center, black and white glossy photos \u00a0from schools of nursing, and so forth.<\/p>\n
This place has to be on the curriculum for any student of Nursing in Montreal. It speaks of the perseverance of the founders who spent decades short staffed and underfunded, toiling to care for the destitute in Montreal.<\/p>\n
I stood transfixed before a wall to wall panorama of the Lachine canal from above \u00a0circa 1900. This place ran on coal and was a place of unprecedented ill-health and poverty. The congregation cared for thousands, on this very spot and throughout the city, every year. A stark reminder that few among the rich and powerful cared for the poor then or now.<\/p>\n
Fully restored to the 21st century I could still feel the coal dust on my skin and in my lungs. A stark reminder that our use of 19th century technologies must end, if only for my personal health.<\/p>\n
Thank you for \u00a0centuries of caring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
201, avenue des Pins Ouest, Montr\u00e9al, Qu\u00e9bec. 514-849-2919 Our tour guide was Nicole Garneau a member of l\u2019association hispanophone de Laval. She commented the one hour visit entirely in spanish. She did a tremendous job and all this the day before leaving for Tanzania. Great work! Steve Edwards http:\/\/museedeshospitalieres.qc.ca\/ http:\/\/www.rhsj.org\/en\/ Montreal, Sept 9, 2017 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-classifiee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1675,"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions\/1675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hispanolaval.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}