Stimulated by the influence in France, the popular religiosity of the Counter Reformation, new orders for women began appearing in the seventeenth century.
[1] 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.
[8] 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.
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 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.
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.
The Académie Sainte-Famille was a school in the remote town of Tracadie, New Brunswick, operated by the Religieuses Hospitalières de Saint-Joseph.
It warned against the dangers of mixed marriages and heretical books, he imposed uniform discipline, clergy, and he sought out congregations from Europe, both male and female, who would staff the expanding diocese.
It responded by selling off its property, discontinuing cloistered community living and regular group prayer, and dispensing with habits.
The areas of education, health care, pastoral ministry and social services are still paramount, though the ways in which the sisters work within a given field has changed.
A long tradition ended in 2006 when Sister Sheelagh Martin, a chemistry professor, retired as the last member of the congregation to teach there.