On Good Friday in 1620, Marguerite Bourgeoys was born into a time of religious conflict and colonial expansion throughout Europe. In the northern French province of Champagne, she was the seventh of thirteen children born into the middle-class family of candlemaker Abraham Bourgeoys and Guillemette Gamier.

Not shortly after Marguerite's mother's death in 1640, she started to turn towards God's calling. Marguerite experienced a visionary encounter with a statue of the Virgin Mary at Notre-Dame Abbey on October 7, of that year, during a procession honoring Our Lady of the Rosary.

“We passed again in front of the portal of Notre-Dame, where there was a stone image above the door,” Marguerite later recounted. “When I looked up and saw it I thought it was very beautiful, and at the same time I found myself so touched and so changed that I no longer knew myself, and on my return to the house everybody noticed the change.”

Throughout her life, Marguerite would emulate the Virgin Mary to a great degree. Marguerite was one of the few consecrated women in the 17th century to maintain an active apostolate outside the monastery.

She was a member of the non-cloistered "external" branch of the Congregation of Notre-Dame in Troyes from 1640 to 1652. This group was made up of women who had received training as teachers through the order. She also applied to and was turned down from several religious orders, including the Carmelites. After being turned down, Marguerite had the opportunity to volunteer for a 1653 expedition to the Canadian colony of Quebec.

Physically, colony life was quite challenging. Upon her arrival, Marguerite discovered that there was little chance of the children living to a healthy age to attend school. Still, she started working with the hospital's head nurse in Montreal and eventually opened her first school in a stable in 1658.

That year, she left for France again and came back to Montreal with three new teachers and an aide. These women were dubbed the "Daughters of the Congregation" due to their ties to the founding French Congregation of Notre-Dame.

The Congregation of Notre-Dame de Montréal, whose sisters gave up security and comfort to teach religion and other topics to the children of the region then known as "New France," would later grow into a distinct religious organization. Living in abject poverty, they would travel to wherever help was needed, providing education and carrying out charitable deeds.

Two additional travels to France in 1670 and 1680 were necessary for the order's formation. In the first, King Louis XIV gave Marguerite's initiative his blessing based on civil law. However, the hierarchy of the church was reluctant to accept a women's organization that did not have any cloistered nuns. Although the Bishop of Quebec had approved their work in 1676, their rule of life would not get official confirmation until 1698.

Meanwhile, Marguerite and her companions continued on their mission of education and compassion. Because of how essential her efforts were to Quebec society, Marguerite earned the title "Mother of the Colony."

The order expanded despite the fact that the teaching sisters frequently lived in huts and faced other difficulties. They established schools where they educated recently arrived immigrants on how to survive in their new environment, in addition to devoting their time to teaching children. As the order grew, Marguerite handed leadership up to one of the sisters.

The foundress, who was then known as Sister Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament, withdrew to her room and prayed alone throughout the final two years of her life. After a young community member fell ill on the final day of 1699, Sister Marguerite appealed to God to bear her suffering instead of her. While the elderly foundress suffered for twelve days before passing away on January 12, 1700, the young woman recovered.

In 1982, St. Marguerite Bourgeoys became the first female saint in Canadian Catholic history when she was declared a saint by Pope John Paul II.

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