Who is Blessed Emilie Tavernier-Gamelin?
Emilie Tavernier was born in Montreal on February 19, 1800. She was the youngest of fifteen children. Her family lived on a plot of land called Terre Providence located in the city’s north end. Emilie admired her mother who, in spite of the family’s modest means, would never allow any beggar who knocked on their door to go away empty-handed. Emilie’s childhood was punctuated with hard trials: nine of her brothers and sisters died at an early age. She lost her mother at the age of 4 and her father when she was 14. At the death of her mother, she was adopted by an aunt on her father’s side, who placed her in a boarding school operated by the Sisters of Congregation de Notre-Dame. When she was 18 years old, her kind heart led her to help her widowed brother and eventually a sick cousin in Quebec city. Later, she returned to live with her cousin Agathe Perrault-Nowlan in Montreal. At 23, Emilie married Jean-Baptiste Gamelin, owner of an apple orchard, who was 27 years her senior. The happy
