PIOT DE LANGLOISERIE (L’Angloiserie), MARIE-MARGUERITE, dite Saint-Hippolyte, sister of the Congregation of Notre-Dame and superior of the community (superior general); b. 11 Feb. 1702 at Varennes, near Montreal (Que.), daughter of Charles-Gaspard Piot* de Langloiserie and Marie-Thérèse Dugué de Boisbriand; d. 10 Feb. 1781 in Montreal.

Marie-Marguerite Piot de Langloiserie came from two families belonging to the Canadian élite. Her father was king’s lieutenant at Quebec and a knight of the order of Saint-Louis; her maternal grandfather, Michel-Sidrac Dugué* de Boisbriand, had been one of the earliest seigneurs in the Montreal region. In 1721 Marie-Marguerite entered the noviciate of the Congregation of Notre-Dame in Montreal as did her sister Charlotte-Angélique, who was six years her senior. Charlotte-Angélique, named Sister Sainte-Rosalie, was a member of the community for 23 years and died on 1 March 1744, seven years before her sister’s election as superior.

Sister Saint-Hippolyte’s first term of office at the head of the community began in 1751 under auspicious circumstances. The sisters were in better health and no death had been recorded for nearly two years, in contrast to 19 deaths during the preceding four years. Peace and harmony reigned in the community, and both French and Canadian religious and civil authorities supported the order in many ways. Sister Saint-Hippolyte’s first six years as superior were not marked by any major events, given the renewal of hostilities between France and Great Britain in America. When she resumed direction of the order in 1763 following Sister Marie-Angélique Lefebvre* Angers, dite Saint-Simon, the treaty of Paris had been signed. Apparently to demonstrate its determination to continue its work in spite of the permanent change in régime, the community immediately laid the foundations for a new mission, at Saint-François-de-la-Rivière du-Sud (Saint-François-de-Montmagny). The endeavour only revealed the community’s precarious financial position, but the following year the parishioners of Saint-François and their priest, Pierre-Laurent Bédard, gave the sisters a convent built for them and their boarders.

Marguerite Bourgeoys*’s work was in fact preserved. While Sister Saint-Hippolyte attended to settling the community’s business in France in accordance with the agreements between the French and British crowns and resigned herself to selling some land to improve the community’s financial position, the sisters continued to educate young girls in Montreal and in the nearby missions of Pointe-aux-Trembles, Lachine, Saint-Laurent, Boucherville, La Prairie, and Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes (Oka). In the Quebec region the nuns served in the missions at Champlain, Sainte-Famille, Île d’Orléans, and Pointe-aux-Trembles (Neuville). They had not yet resumed the mission in Lower Town, Quebec; the mission at Château-Richer, founded by Marguerite Bourgeoys herself in 1689, would never be restored. As for Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island), its mission had carried on at La Rochelle, France, after the missionaries were deported in 1758, but it came to an end with the deaths of the last two sisters, Marie-Marguerite-Daniel Arnaud*; dite Saint-Arsène, in 1764, and Marie Robichaud, dite Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, in 1766.

By 1766, when Sister Saint-Hippolyte’s second term of office as superior came to an end and she was replaced by Marie-Josèphe Maugue-Garreau, dite de l’Assomption, the community had survived the transitional period that every Canadian order went through after the conquest, a significant achievement. The Congregation of Notre-Dame no longer had reason to doubt its future.

Andrée Désilets