Emilia Tavernier Gamelin (1800–1851)

Biography

Widow and Canadian founder, Emilia Tavernier Gamelin responded to her own losses by opening her heart to all kinds of suffering. Orphaned since she was a child, she learned to prepare a "king's table" at home for the poor. After losing her husband and three children, she did not close herself in pain: she welcomed elderly women, the sick, orphans, people with disabilities and victims of epidemics. She founded the Sisters of Providence to continue these works. During a cholera epidemic he contracted the disease while serving and died in Montreal in 1851.