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mainly to the education of girls, as well as caring for Father Poncet introduced her to Marie-Madeleine
the sick and needy. de La Peltrie, a wealthy widow who wanted to de-
“Give me my mother back!” vote herself to evangelizing native Amerindian girls.
In human terms, the undertaking sounded like sheer
Marie Martin was to be admitted to the Ursu- madness: how to imagine a group of feeble women
lines in Tours on January 25, 1631. On January 11, setting sail on an ocean infested with pitfalls and pir-
her eleven-year-old son Claude ran away, aboard a ates? There were many objections to the scheme.
boat sailing up the Loire. After three days of fran- Bishop d’Eschaux initially turned a deaf ear, but in the
tic searching, he was found wandering in the port of end, he recognized that God’s will was at work in this
Blois. Marie entrusted him to the care of her sister, undertaking. After resolving a thousand difficulties,
and entered the novitiate on the appointed day. She Marie of the Incarnation, accompanied by Madame
later confessed that hearing his cries and screams de La Peltrie, who was financing the foundation, and
had made her feel as if her heart had been ripped two Ursulines, set sail for the New World on May 4,
out. Over the next few days, the poor child besieged 1639 on the Saint-Joseph. During the crossing, the
the monastery, succeeding several times in breaking ship almost collided with an iceberg. The travelers
into the enclosure. One day, he arrived with a group reached Quebec City on the 1st of August.
of schoolchildren who shouted at the nuns. Amid all
the noise, Marie heard her son’s voice crying out:
“Give me my mother back!”
How could this loving, Christian mother “aban-
don” her child? In human terms, such an act seems
impossible to explain. However, Marie’s decision
had been endorsed, after careful consideration, by
her spiritual director and by the Bishop of Tours, Ber-
trand d’Eschaux. The Lord Jesus is emphatic about
the demanding nature of his call, as we read in Saint
Luke: If any one comes to me without hating his fath-
er and mother, wife and children, brothers and sis-
ters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple
(Lk 14:26). The verb “to hate” here translates a Heb-
raism that means “to put behind”. The call to follow
Christ “first” is a direct consequence of the primacy
of God and the kingdom of heaven over all other Arrival of the first Ursulines in Quebec City
affections, even those that are the most legitimate.
The Church, in her wisdom, has set just limits to this An active mystic
radicality by preventing those with “responsibility for The French settlement of Canada had only really
souls” from abandoning those entrusted to them to begun some thirty years earlier with the founding
enter a religious order. But in this case, Marie did not of Quebec by Champlain. Development was slow
leave Claude without support: she had provided for because of the lack of settlers—in 1640, there were
everything he would need for his education and his fewer than 3,000—and general insecurity. The town
future. Claude would go on to brilliant studies with was surrounded by fortifications, initially made of
the Jesuits and, one day, freely decide to give him- wood; non-hostile Indians, mainly the Hurons, were
self entirely to God in the monastic life. allowed to enter, in contrast to the English forts, and
Marie Martin, now Sister Marie of the Incarnation thus contacts and relations were established. Attacks
(not to be confused with Madame Acarie, a Carmel- by the Iroquois (another indigenous tribe in the re-
ite nun who bore the same religious name), made gion), at the instigation of the English, were relatively
her religious vows in 1633. She soon became sub- common, obliging the French to exercise great cau-
mistress of novices and teacher of Christian doctrine, tion.
yet she was secretly convinced that the Tours mon- Mother Marie of the Incarnation soon felt fulfilled
astery was for her no more than a stopping place. by the fervor she saw in the young Church in Canada.
Little by little, her apostolic vocation took shape. In She was very happy to take part in the Mission, al-
a dream, God led her through a vast country “full of though she had to admit that daily life was extremely
thick fog”. Later, the Lord expressly told her: “This is tough. As soon as she arrived, she proved her tal-
Canada that I showed you; I want you to go there ents as a “businesswoman”. She settled into a make-
and build a house for Jesus and Mary.” shift house in the lower town, which she nicknamed
The Relations des Jésuites gave Sister Marie her “Louvre”. To keep out the cold, bedding had to
information about the missions in “New France”. be arranged in trunks lined with serge. In 1642, the u

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