Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw the attention of the House to a decisive event in the history of the municipality of Saint-Jacques de Montcalm.
It was 150 years ago, on August 23, 1853, that Mother Marie-Anne and her 27 followers arrived in Saint-Jacques de Montcalm, after a long and perilous two-day voyage from Vaudreuil, where the Congregation of the Sisters of Sainte Anne had been founded in 1850 by Esther Blondin, who later took the name Marie-Anne. This exceptional woman was beatified by Pope John Paul II on April 29, 2001.
A dinner in honour of the anniversary of the arrival of the Sisters of Sainte Anne was held on September 6. More than 400 people attended this event to commemorating the congregation's 150 years of history.
The Saint-Jacques boarding school, founded in 1853, eventually grew into the Collège Esther-Blondin in 1996, a private secondary school offering an international education to girls and boys, at last fulfilling Mother Marie-Anne's dream of coeducational schools for poor rural children.
In recognition of this great religious figure—