Food Preservation
A summer pavilion is built behind the chapel in 1926, a covered area serving as a place of recreation and reading for novices. In good weather the entire community occasionally gathered there for its meals. In preparation for the winter season, postulants, novices and professed Nuns gathered to preserve vegetables and fruits freshly harvested from the garden. The existence of these canning duties (corvées) is regularly mentioned in the Motherhouse chronicles until the end of the 1960s.
Ave Maria Pavilion, 1930. Photography: author unknown. Grey Nuns of Montréal’s Archives, Motherhouse (Montreal)’s Fonds, L082-H-1-65
Ave Maria Kiosk, circa 1930. Photography: author unknown. Grey Nuns of Montréal’s Archives, Motherhouse (Montréal)’s Fonds, L082-7Y11F
“Postulants, novices and the professed are going to a corn-bee this evening which will take up the whole of recreation time. Evening prayer will be in private.”
Chronicles, 19 August 1952. Transcription.
Archives of The Grey Nuns of Montréal, Motherhouse (Montréal)’s Fonds, L082
Summer Kiosk, circa 1930. Photography: author unknown. Grey Nuns of Montréal’s Archives, Motherhouse (Montréal)’s Fonds, L082-916B
Pantry, undated. Photography: author unknown. Grey Nuns of Montréal’s Archives, Motherhouse (Montréal)’s Fonds, L082-9Y1B
Food cellars occupy part of the basement where vegetables, apples, molasses, jams, marinades, bacon, tobacco, etc. are stored.
“I worked in the kitchen. We froze a lot of supplies. (…) A freezer had been installed in the basement of the Motherhouse. One day a Sister was locked up in there for an entire day. There was no emergency plan at that time. The Sister was okay, but she was very cold…!”
Testimony of Sister Claudette Ménard, s.g.m.,
collected at Square Angus (Montreal), the 28 November 2023