Catholic sisters and nuns in Canada have been an important presence since the 17th century.
Quebec
Outside the home, Canadian women had few domains which they controlled. An important exception came with Roman Catholic nuns, especially in Québec. Stimulated by the influence in France, the popular religiosity of the Counter Reformation, new orders for women began appearing in the seventeenth century. In the next three centuries women opened dozens of independent religious orders, funded in part by dowries provided by the parents of young nuns. The orders specialized in charitable works, including hospitals, orphanages, homes for unwed mothers, and schools.
The Ursuline Sisters arrived in Quebec City in 1639, and in Montreal in 1641, as well as small towns. They had to overcome harsh conditions, uncertain funding, and unsympathetic authorities as they engaged in educational and nursing functions. They attracted endowments and became important landowners in Quebec. Marie de l'Incarnation (1599-1672) was the mother superior at Quebec, 1639–72.
Numerous orders came over from France. In the region near Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, near Montreal, the main schools were set up by the Ordre des Trinitaires (Trinitarian Order) for men, and the religieuses des Sacrés-Coeurs et de l'adoration perpétuelle (nuns of the Sacred Hearts and perpetual adoration) for women.
The Church in Quebec invested heavily in confidence in the late 19th century. In 1850 there were about 600 nuns, by 1900 there were 6500. Some were in contemplative orders; but the majority staffed church institutions, especially elementary schools, hospitals, asylums, and orphanages. Boarding schools were especially popular, and by 1900 to hundred of them attracted 11 percent of all female students in Québec.
In 1910, 850 sisters from different orders taught in the province's high schools and elementary schools.
The traditionalism of some orders conflicted with new theories in psychiatry, as seen in the case of the Sisters of Providence, who in 1873 founded the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu a large asylum for the insane. There were over 6000 admissions from 1873 to 1900, most from urban areas although Quebec was heavily rural. A fire killed 46 girls in 1916. The congregation renewed its contract with the Quebec government in 1924. The sisters saw their mission to feed, maintain, treat and rehabilitate mental patients. During the 1940s and 1950s, however, the inter-personal and inter-professional relations between the sisters and a group of young psychiatrists, the "modernists," became increasingly strained, The suitable therapeutic environment fell victim to political interests within the institution, according to the 1962 Bédard Report on the status of psychiatric hospitals in Quebec.
In the first half of the twentieth century, about 2-3% of Québec's young women became nuns; there were 6600 in 1901, and 26,000 in 1941. In Québec in 1917, 32 teaching orders operated 586 boarding schools for girls. At that time there was no public education for girls in Québec beyond elementary school. Hospitals were another specialty, the first of which was founded in 1701. In 1936, the nuns of Québec operated 150 institutions, with 30,000 beds to care for the long-term sick, the homeless, and orphans. On a smaller scale, Catholic orders of nuns operated similar institutions in other provinces.
Newfoundland
In 1833 at the request of Bishop Michael Anthony Fleming, the Presentation Sisters came to Newfoundland from Galway and opened a school for children. Within weeks the sisters were inundated with new pupils, the children of the Irish of St. John's, who saw education as the best means of economic and social advancement. In 1842, Fleming invited the Sisters of Mercy to come to teach girls and to help create a Catholic middle class. The Presentation Sisters, Mother Mary Bernard Kirwan accompanied by Sisters Mary Xavier Molony, Josephine French and M. de Sales Lovelock came in 1833 and established a school next to the convent. This school is still in operation. The motherhouse was established at St. John's adjacent to the Basilica of St. John the Baptist.
Nova Scotia
The Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul were founded in 1849 in Halifax, Nova Scotia from New York; this has been designated a National Historic Event. They came in response to a request by then Archbishop of Halifax William Walsh. By 1856, the order in Halifax was accepted as a separate congregation by Pope Pius IX and took on their new official name. The order is part of the Sisters of Charity Federation which includes a number of congregations using the "Sisters of Charity" umbrella.