(15 or 25 Dec. 1848-3 May 1937), nursing sister. (Rev. Sister Janet Macdonell) Born at Cornwall, Ont. Parents: Angus Allen Macdonell and his wife Catherine McDonald. Angus Allen Macdonell, who was a contractor on the building of the Beauharnois Canal and other public works, died when Janet was a baby, leaving a young widow and three small daughters. Janet’s education included several years at Mont St. Marie College, Montreal, in the 1860s. She entered the religious life in 1872 at the Hotel Dieu in Kingston with the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph. She is said to have chosen this nursing congregation in order to resist her own dislike of sickrooms. Her training included several years at the Hotel Dieu Hospital, Montreal, where Dr William Hingston was an instructor. In her earlier years, she suffered from but overcame an illness diagnosed as TB.

     Leaving Kingston, where she had served as superior of the Hotel Dieu Hospital, she was one of 5 Sisters of the Religious Hospitallers who arrived in Cornwall on 9 Feb. 1897, their intention being to help found a Hotel Dieu Hospital there. The remainder of her life and career was in Cornwall. In accordance with her intentions, she was one of the founders there of the Hotel Dieu Hospital, which opened first in the former home of John Sandfield Macdonald. Later, she was involved also in the founding and operation of three other important Cornwall institutions, (1) St. Paul’s Home, which was for the elderly, and accepted its residents from all denominations (2) the Nazareth Orphanage, and (3) St. Joseph’s School of Nursing, associated with the Hotel Dieu Hospital. She died at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Cornwall. The later Hotel Dieu Hospital was built in the 1950s on land inherited by Janet Macdonell from her father.

     There is a portrait of her painted by Stuart McCormick (commissioned 1961, so not a painting from the life), which in 1997 was in the Hotel Dieu Convent, Cornwall. Her name has been commemorated in (1) the Macdonell Memorial Hospital, for patients chronically ill or in need of rehabilitation, and, (2) its successor, the Janet Macdonell Pavilion for chronic care patients, which adjoins the Hotel Dieu Hospital, and was officially opened in 1989.

     Her sister Katherine (d. 11 Nov. 1920), the widow of John Purcell, was a generous financial supporter of the work in Cornwall of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph in Cornwall, and is buried in the Sisters’ cemetery in Cornwall. The Sisters who came to Cornwall in 1897 lived for the first months in Mrs John Purcell’s house.

Obituary, Standard Freeholder 5 May 1937, Glengarry News 7 May 1937 * material kindly made available by the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph, Kingston, including a valuable three-page biog. sketch of Janet Macdonell by Sister Loretta Gaffney * Sister Dolores Kane, Caring People Helping People: the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph of Cornwall 1897-1997 (1997): index, many refs. (has portraits); also, 6-9, 22, 104, for Mrs John Purcell * Jessie Deslauriers, Like a Bay Tree, Ever Green: the History of St. Joseph Province, Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph (1984) 16, 69 * Villeneuve 77-81 * Senior 317-320 &c. for Cornwall institutions named here * obituary of Mrs John Purcell, Cornwall Standard 18 Nov. 1920