A cousin of Eulalie Bourgeois on her way to sainthood

The Roy family has strong connections to Sherbrooke, Quebec. Anthyme Roy and Georgiana Paré died there. Their daughter Laura Roy married to Robert Drouin raised her family there. One of Anthyme's sons, Arthur Roy of Billerica Ma. had a cottage just outside Sherbrooke which his family kept well into the sixties. There is yet another more subtle connection to Sherbrooke. This town's south west area is dominated by a huge grey building - the provincial house of the Sisters of the Holy family (petites soeurs de la Ste-Famille). That house was built and the religious order founded by a cousin of Eulalie Bourgeois - Sister Marie-Léonie Paradis.

Eulalie's father Édouard Bourgeois married Marie Louise Grégoire on January 13th 1823 in St-Cyprien-de-Napierville. Marie Louise Grégoire was the daughter of Joseph Grégoire and Louise Brouillet who married June 11th 1804 in L'Acadie. Marie-Louise's sister Émilie was the eighth child of Joseph and Louise. She married Joseph Paradis in L'Acadie on October 3rd 1837. On May 12th 1840, she gave birth to Élodie Virginie Paradis. When Élodie was five years old, her father rented out his L'Acadie property and at first rented and then purchased the mill in the La Salle seigneury. She was educated in the convent in Laprairie and in August 1857 joined the sisters of Ste-Croix under the religious name of Mother Marie-Léonie.
In 1862, she was in New York city for eight years working in an orphanage. In 1870, the american nuns of Ste-Croix separated from the french branch. Élodie returned to Montreal. At the age of 30, urged on by father Sorin, she joined the sisters of the Holy-Cross and moved to Indiana where she taught for five years. Meanwhile in Memramcook, New Brunswick, father Lefebvre whom Élodie had known in her childhood in Laprairie had founded a college which was to become the University of Moncton. He requested that Élodie come to teach domestic science and run the school's kitchen. Élodie left Lake Linden, Mi. where she had moved after Indiana and once in New Brunswick tried to found an institute dedicated to the teaching of domestic science. This endeavour encountered much opposition from the local church.
After spending 21 years in New Brunswick, Élodie was transferred to Sherbrooke where she found the support to start a new religious order, the sisters of the Holy Family, and the institute of the same name. At her death on May 3rd 1912 at the age of 72, over 600 nuns had joined her order. She had travelled throughout North-America to set up institutes - as far as Menlo Park California.
In 1952, a tribunal was formed to start instructing the canonisation of Mother Léonie-Élodie. 73 witnesses were heard. Her writings scrutinized. This is a slow process. On January 31st 1981, Pope John Paul II signed a decree which officially recognized Élodie as venerable. She was beatified (the first to be so on Canadian soil) in 1984.

Notes for this biography were taken from Pierre Brault's Histoire de L'Acadie.

You can see a picture of hers at:

http://www.marieleonie.org/biographie.html

Addendum: When Élodie joined the Sisters of Ste-Croix at the age of 14, her father was prospecting for gold in California. How people travelled in those days!