The Sisters of Providence are a religious institute of Roman Catholic sisters founded in 1843 by Mother Émilie Gamelin. They are headquartered in Montreal, Quebec with five provinces: Mother Joseph Province, Holy Angels Province, Philippines Vice-Province, Émilie-Gamelin Province and Bernard Morin Province. History The community of Sisters of Providence or more accurately, "Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor", was founded in Montreal, Canada, by Bishop Ignace Bourget and Madame Jean Baptiste Gamelin (Marie Emélie Eugénie Tavernier), 25 March 1843. After the deaths of her husband and three children, Madame Gamelin developed a particular devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows, whose commemoration remains the congregation's principal feast. With the approbation of the religious and civil authorities Madame Gamelin, a childless widow, had for some time been sheltering in her own house a number of infirm and poor old women. In 1836, Émilie and her 24 charges moved to a larger home, the “Yellow House.” This new home came to be called "Providence House". After a voyage to Europe, Bishop Bourget wished to bring to Montreal some French Sisters of Charity, but the plan came to nothing, and he decided to appeal to the young women of his own diocese. On 25 March 1843, in the chapel of the first asylum in Montreal seven sisters received the religious habit at his hands. Mother Gamelin became the first Superior of the Congregation. The new institution developed rapidly. Its object is to provide for the poor and sick spiritual and temporal relief, to shelter children and the aged, to visit the homes of the poor and the ill, to shelter the infirm and the homeless, to maintain dispensaries for the needy, and to instruct the young. They opened a shelter for Irish orphans of typhus and took charge of a school for girls. In 1854, at the invitation of Louis de Goesbriand, Bishop of Burlington, the sisters opened St. Joseph Orphanage. In 1856 Augustin-Magloire Blanchet, the bishop of the new Diocese of Nesqually, approached the Sisters of Providence in Montreal, seeking their assistance for his diocese in the Pacific Northwest Territories of the United States. Mother Joseph Pariseau was chosen to lead four companions as missionaries to that region. Accompanied by the bishop, they spent over a month traveling by train and ship from Montreal, arriving on the 8 December of that year. They settled in Vancouver, Washington and established a convent-school and