Ursule  LANDRY

1815 - Leprosy, so far as is known, appeared for the first time in Canada at Tracadie in the Province of New Brunswick

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Four centuries of medical history in Canada Volume 1 By John Joseph Heagerty · 1928

1815 - Leprosy
Hers was the first case of leprosy in Tracadie NB. She began showing symptoms around 1815 and she died of the disease in 1828. By the time of Ursule's death her leprosy had spread to her husband, sister Isabelle, and a pallbearer, Francis Saulnier, at her funeral.
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Ursule and Leprosy
'One sultry August afternoon in the year 1828 the Rev. Mr. de Bellefeuille, a missionary priest visiting Tracadie, was called upon to bury a woman named Ursule Landry who died of a mysteious and loathsome disease to which none could qive a name. Her flesh had become hard and scaly; hideous swellings distorted her face and form; spots of a brownish tint appeared upon her limb...

Pauvre Ursule! There are some in Tracadie who hate that woman, who say she brought a curse on all of us. But I don't blame her for 'La maladie' any more than I would blame the weather or the food that ue ate... though there are those who believe the climate, cold and damp, brought it to our shores or that it is caused by the salted fish.

I was a girl of fifteen when Ursule died; so I knew her, a small woman with rounded shoulders who used two walking sticks to stand. Her face was hidden under a veil qnd she always wore a bonnet.

For the last year of the disease, she stayed in her cabin with only her...Read full story


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Children of Lararus: The Story of the Lazaretto at Tracadie; Provincial House, Bathurst, NB