Gosselin, Rosa (1890-1964)

Rosa Gosselin, given the religious name of Sister Eleonore, spent fifty years in the field of French Catholic Education in southern Saskatchewan. Born on December 16, 1890, in St. Malo, Manitoba, she was educated in part by the Filles de la Croix, one of many Catholic teaching congregations which had come to western Canada from France after being forced out of the French school system by anti-clerical legislation. In 1910, she left for the congregation's training convent in France, returning to Canada in 1912 to attend Regina Normal School. In October 1914 Sister Eleonore came to the newly constructed Willow Bunch convent. Unable to return to France in 1917 because of World War I, she professed final vows in Manitoba. Sent to Laflèche in 1922, she returned to Willow Bunch in 1937 when operations at the Laflèche convent were scaled back because of unfavourable economic conditions. She continued to teach in Willow Bunch, while taking on the additional tasks of parish sexton, then of convent bursar. Forced to give up teaching because of deafness in 1948, she retained her other duties for the rest of her life. Struck by cancer in the late 1950s, she underwent a series of operations. She died on August 20, 1964, in St. Boniface, Manitoba.

Richard Lapointe

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Further Reading

Lapointe, Richard. 1988. “Rosa Gosselin (soeur éléonore, F.d.l.C.).” Pp. 192-96 in 100 noms: Petit dictionnaire biographique des Franco-Canadiens de la Saskatchewan. Regina: Société historique.