The Sisters of Notre-Dame d’Auvergne in Ponteix, Sask., are packing up and selling their historic convent, but the nuns have no plans to leave town.
Instead, they’ve chosen to leave a legacy in the small prairie community their parish helped build, 220 kilometres southwest of Regina.
The sisters donated $3 million to expand the St. Joseph Seniors’ Residence by 10 rooms.
Eventually, some sisters will move into the new rooms. With an average age of 89 and no new members in 25 years, they realized independent living is becoming difficult and started to plan for a transition.
“Many wanted to stay in Ponteix, so we had to try to build a smaller house or do something …where we can still live our life as a group, but once we leave [then] our house can be useful to others,” Regional Superior Rose-Alma Dumont said in an interview.
The three-storey, 16,920-square-foot convent built in 1916 is now for sale. The property listing emphasizes the “meticulously maintained” building could be adapted for many uses and the sisters hope it will be used for education or health care.
The large financial gift is a far cry from the convent’s roots, said Sister Marguerite Dumont, who is also a biological sister to Rose-Alma.
“It was very, very poor to start with,” Marguerite said. “If we hadn’t had the farmers that helped us with their gardens and other things … we were extremely poor.”
The congregation used to own the St. Joseph Residence, but it is now a Saskatchewan Health Authority affiliate and managed by Emmanuel Health, which is providing 17 per cent of the expansion project’s budget; the sisters are covering the rest.
“I know that the people in their old age can stay in their community,” said Rose-Alma, who entered the convent in 1950. “That’s a big plus for them.”
The sisters tapped locals to develop a plan for their legacy gift, which has been in the works for 10 years. A committee was formed and a local architect helped with designs.
Farmer Guy Roberge sat on the committee since it formed 10 years ago. He said the sisters were intent on creating a legacy for Ponteix despite an initial project quote of $350,000 per room.
“If you multiply that by ten, it’s $3.5 million, so we were all having heart attacks and the nuns were OK with that,” Roberge said. “They said, ‘Yeah, we’re willing to do that and we’ll leave that to the community.'”
Four sisters will move in when the expansion opens this fall, but the new rooms will also be made available to non-nuns.
Local input was necessary and the sisters are hiring locals for the project, Rose-Alma said.
They wanted to leave a lasting gift for Ponteix and give back to the community that’s helped them for more than a century.
“We gave back all our life. We want the good in this world and then get our reward when it’s done,” Rose-Alma said. “We’re not wasting our time until the end. We do a little work.”
