Order of Sisters of Charity of Montreal

The Sisters of Charity of Montreal

Saint Marguerite d'Youville, in the former habit of the institute
Formation	1738
Type	Religious organizations
Legal status	active
Purpose	advocate and public voice, educator and network
Headquarters	Montreal, Quebec
Location	Montreal, Quebec
Region served	Canada, the United States, Colombia, Brazil, Japan, Haiti, Central African Republic, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, Bahamas, and the Dominican Republic
Official language	English French
Website	www.sgm.qc.ca

The Grey Nuns is the name commonly given to 6 distinct Roman Catholic religious communities of women, which trace their origins to the original foundation, of the Sisters of Charity of the Hôpital Général, in Montréal. The Sisters of Charity of Montreal, formerly called The Sisters of Charity of the Hôpital Général of Montreal and more commonly known as the Grey Nuns of Montreal, is a Canadian religious institute of Roman Catholic religious sisters, founded in 1737 by Saint Marguerite d'Youville, a young widow.

The congregation was founded when Marguerite d'Youville and three of her friends formed a religious association to care for the poor. They rented a small house in Montreal on 30 October 1738, taking in a small number of destitute persons. On 3 June 1753 the society received royal sanction, which also transferred to them the rights and privileges previously granted by letters patent in 1694 to the Frères Hospitaliers de la Croix et de Saint-Joseph, known after their founder as the Frères Charon. At that time they also took over the work of the bankrupt Frères Charon at the Hôpital Général de Montréal located outside the city walls. (In the seventeenth century, a “general hospital” was an institution that took in old people, the ill, and the poor. Medical care was dispensed at the Hôtel Dieu.)

In 1755 the sisters cared those stricken during a smallpox epidemic. As the sisters were not cloistered, they could go out to visit the sick. Those assisted included the First Nations people in Oka, who were among the benefactors who later helped rebuild the Hospital after a fire in 1765.

After 1840, the order rapidly expanded, and over the next 100 years became a major provider of health care and other social services throughout Quebec, Western and Northern Canada, and the northern United States. In 1855, the Grey Nuns were called to Toledo, Ohio, to care for many suffering from cholera.

The city residents mocked the nuns by calling them "les grises" – a phrase meaning both "the grey women" and "the drunken women", in reference to the color of their attire and d'Youville's late husband, François-Magdeleine You d’Youville (1700–1730), a notorious bootlegger. Marguerite d'Youville and her colleagues adopted the particular black and beige dress of their religious institute in 1755: despite a lack of grey colour, they kept the nickname. When a Grey Nun worked as a nurse in a hospital, she usually exchanged her taupe habit for a white one. They wore a bonnet instead of a veil, as that was more practical for everyday work.