Canada Hall
The Hospital
A reconstructed convent hospital is found just past the gate at the end of the New France square. Only a small part of the hospital is visible, but it would have been connected to a much larger institution.
Nuns provided daily medical assistance to all members of the community, including long-term care for the chronically and mentally ill, and help for the poor, the old, the orphaned, and the abandoned. A patient is sleeping in one room (left), across from which is the apothecary's room (centre and right), where medication was prepared using plants grown in the convent's garden.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, medicines treated only the symptoms of disease because so little was known about its cause. Although the inhabitants of New France obtained most of their medicinal ingredients and knowledge from Europe, they also learned from the Indians.
| Louise Soumande known as de Saint-Augustin First superior of the Hôpital Général de Québec (1694-1699) Collection of the Augustines of the Hôpital Général de Québec |
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| Jean-Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrières de
Saint-Vallier Bishop of Quebec from 1688 to 1727 Died at the Hôpital Général de Québec Collection of the Augustines of the Hôpital Général de Québec |
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| Marie-Charlotte de Ramezay known as Saint-Claude de la Croix Superior of the Hôpital Général de Québec (1756-1759) Collection of the Augustines of the Hôpital Général de Québec |
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| Hospitaller caring for the Lord, represented by
a patient circa 1670 Musée des Augustines de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec |
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The Beauport Chapel Bell, 1666
bronze; cast in FranceCollection of the Archives nationales du Québec
This is the oldest bell in Canada.
In 1666, Robert Giffard (b.1587; d.1668, in Beauport), master surgeon, first doctor of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec hospital, and colonizing seigneur, gave the parish of Beauport the sum of one hundred pounds as payment for a piece of land. This money was used to buy a bell for the first parish chapel, which had been built circa 1662. In 1713, the parish donated the bell to the church of Saint-Pierre-de-la-Rivière du Sud, a new parish near Montmagny. The same bell was given to the Musée du Québec in 1949.
On one side, the Beauport bell features a crown with the letter "L" below it, representing the reigning monarch, Louis XIV, plus the date 1666, the year that the bell was cast. On the other side, three fleurs-de-lis symbolize the Kingdom of France.
