Date of issue: April 18, 1973
Printer: Ashton-Potter
Design: Raymond Bellemare; based on a painting by L. Dugardin
Jeanne Mance
Jeanne Mance was born in Langres, France, in 1606. At age 20, following her mother’s premature death, she and her sister undertook the care and education of their ten younger brothers and sisters. Perhaps in part because of this, Mance became interested in missionary work, and in her early 30s she decided to devote her life to service in New France.
After she became a member of the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal and received funding for building a hospital, she traveled to Quebec with Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve to establish the settlement of Montreal. The following year (1642), she opened the Hotel-Dieu Hospital. At first, this was located in her own home; in 1645, she moved to a larger building on Rue St Paul. Over the following 30 years, Mance managed the Hospital, recruited sisters from the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph to act as nursing staff, and traveled to France to secure more funding. She died in 1673 in the hospital she had founded three decades earlier.
The Stamp
This stamp commemorates the 300-year anniversary of Mance’s death. Its colorized image and the corresponding black and white image on the first-day cover are based on an oil painting by the French artist L Dugardin (c1865). However, although this painting has been assumed to be of Mance, there is debate about whether it is in fact a true representation.
