Hotel Dieu Hospital (Kingston, Ontario)

In 1841, the Catholic bishop of Kingston, Remigius Gaulin, asked the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph (RHSJ) of Montreal to send a group of sisters to establish a Catholic Hospital in his city to provide care for the poor Irish Catholic immigrants in the city. The RHSJs, however, were unable to find suitable buildings for their hospital until 1845. On September 2, 1845, Mother Amable Bourbonniere along with Sisters Huguette Claire Latour, Emilie Barbarie, and Louise Davignon, accompanied by their benefactress, Miss Josephine Perras and Mr. Laframboise, a friend of the community, arrived in Kingston. They stayed with the Kingston Notre Dame Sisters for two days, and then moved into their hospital, located in a small limestone building, now 229 Brock Street, on September 4, 1845. The Kingston RHSJs saw their first patient on September 7. By the end of October, they had refurbished and moved into their monastery, located at 233 Brock Street, allowing them to have a men's ward on the main floor of the Hospital and a women's ward on the second floor.[1][2]

The hospital was in operation when the city suffered an epidemic of typhus in 1847. In addition to ill and dying patients, Hotel Dieu cared for 100 orphaned children who had lost their parents.[3] The disease had accompanied poor Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine in their homeland. No one yet understood how the disease spread, and poor sanitation practices compounded the epidemic.[4]

In 1892, the hospital was moved to its present location on Sydenham Street, which formerly housed Regiopolis College. In 1846, Alexander Macdonell (bishop) established Regiopolis College, which offered academic and theological training to Roman Catholic youth. The original building is now part of the Hotel Dieu Hospital.[5]

The main wing of the Hotel Dieu Hospital, the Jeanne Mance Wing, completed in 1984, is named for a woman sent by the RHSJ to New France in 1641. Jeanne Mance, a lay woman, was given the responsibility of founding a hospital and caring for the sick in New France. In 1642, she arrived in what is now Montreal and founded the first Hotel Dieu Hospital in 1645.

In 1912 the Sisters of St. Joseph established a nursing school in Kingston at Hotel Dieu Hospital.[6] This became necessary to ease the pressures from the Sisters working at the hospital. Training was provided by nursing sisters and doctors at the hospital ending with a three year diploma.[7] It became an official training school in 1945 and closed in 1974.[8]

• Kingston General Hospital
• Providence Continuing Care Centre (PCCC)
• University Hospitals Kingston Foundation

• Hotel Dieu Hospital - Official web site.