A public art installation honouring the nursing profession was initiated by four St. Mary’s School of Nursing alumnae
If you find yourself at the corner of Des Pins Avenue and Jeanne-Mance Street, you will notice a set of striking bronze sculptures beckoning you to look closer.
Composed of intricate bronze-casted hands and nurses’ capes, the public art installation’s meaning is closely tied to St. Mary’s. Conveying the relationship of care between nurses and their patients, the sculptures are a tribute to the nursing profession – an homage that was made possible by four very determined alumnae of St. Mary’s School of Nursing.
In 2017, Catherine McIninch Murphy, Brenda Noonan Brown, Maureen Fitzgerald and Judith Tisseur Norton – four friends and graduates of St. Mary’s School of Nursing’s Class of 1968 – decided that Montréal needed a permanent work of art paying tribute to their fellow nurses.
Committed to making this dream a reality, the four women undertook to raise the necessary funds themselves. Thanks to the support of several donors, they managed to raise over $250,000, comfortably surpassing their initial goal of $115,000.
Once the funding was secured, they worked in conjunction with the city’s Bureau d’Art Public to select an artist and find the right site for the artwork-to-be.
“A jury of seven, picked by the Bureau d’Art Public, chose the artists from nearly two dozen candidates,” Brenda Noonan Brown told the Montreal Gazette. One of the members of this jury was architect and philanthropist Phyllis Lambert, who backed the project from the very beginning. Local sculptors Fiona Annis and Véronique La Perrière M. ultimately won the mandate, which they worked on for two years. During this time, the four women who spearheaded the initiative were actively involved in the artistic process: the hands cast in bronze are theirs. A diverse group of twelve nurses of different ages, genders, and cultural backgrounds were also consulted and participated in a special moulding workshop.
Nearly seven years after the idea for the artwork was first conceived, the installation, titled “Our Breath Beyond”/ “Notre souffle par-delà”, was inaugurated in October 2023.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled with the result,” said Catherine McIninch Murphy at the site with the three other women. “The artists so perfectly captured the mood and spirit of nursing, as well as the transmission of knowledge to a patient and from one generation of nurses to the next. The pieces represent care and kindness, teamwork and upholding the whole social fabric of the community. And this is where it all first started in the city, at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital.”
Jeanne Mance, who helped found both the Hôtel-Dieu and the city of Montreal, was indeed a nurse. “Nurses and nursing have been part of the DNA of this city since [its foundation],” highlighted Maureen Fitzgerald.
“It’s about time that nurses were recognized,” she continued. “The public really can’t do very much about working conditions. That’s the responsibility of the unions and the government. But what we can do is to promote the profession to the public and to make nurses feel proud of who they are and what they do. This site is now their place.”
