The Convent Site in Louisbourg

Immediately behind the monument are the stabilized ruins representing the convent.

The picture of the monument and the ruins shows the reconstructed barracks of the King’s Bastion in the background.

The first convent was a house purchased in the 1730s from officer Josue DuBois Berthelot de Beaucours for 15,000 livres. That was a great deal of money and even though Beaucours later reduced the price to 10,000 livres, it was a drain on the Sisters’ limited resources.

The convent was located in Block 20 not far from the Hospital facing on Rue d’Orleans. It was a large 1 ½ storey wood framed building (charpente) with a gabled roof which had a chimney at each end and a central bell tower. There were two rows of dormers in the roof. Attached at either end but slightly in front of the house were two smaller buildings. There was a garden behind the convent and a small storage building. The entire property was surrounded by a wooden fence.

The convent survived the New England led siege of 1745 and was described by the English being made up of 6 rooms which could serve as a barracks for 120 men.

The picture of the first convent is an interpretation based on a section of the 1731 View of Louisbourg Harbour by the son of Chief engineer Etienne Verrier.

When the sisters returned to Louisbourg in 1749 the convent was in such a poor state of repair that they decided to construct another one on the same site. By 1753 they had gathered enough resources to begin assembling the timber frame. Unfortunately, a violent storm on October 7 completely destroyed the structure and they had to begin again. It took several years before the second and final convent building was constructed. Historian Eric Krause describes it in this fashion. "The building in 1758 was variously illustrated. No doubt, it had a central bell tower, topped by a cross, resting upon a roof which was gabled to the east and west. The convent may have stood 2 ½ stories tall, with one ridge-line chimney and two south-facing dormers on the roof at either gable end. In its south wall façade, on the ground floor, there was illustrated five east and five west windows flanking perhaps a central doorway, and on the first storey, five east and five west windows flanking perhaps a central life opening. In its east wall facade there stood out one window at attic level, and two windows on the first storey."

By 1772 the convent was in ruins and owned by merchant Lawrence Kavanagh.

The picture of the second convent is from the Fortress of Louisbourg collection and is found in a journal of soldier Gibson Clough. In his journal for 1759 Clough drew pictures of the major buildings at Louisbourg. He shows the convent as an imposing structure of stone rather than as the wood building that it actually was. It is possible that Clough drew the picture from memory after he had returned home or that it was actually a charpente structure with stone infill between the heavy wood framing pieces.

The source for the historical information about the convents is Eric Krause, The Convent of the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame, Block Twenty, Lot E, Louisbourg 1713-1768. Krause House Info-Research Solutions, 22 January 2001.