The year was 1895 and the train to Ste. Agathe had been in operation for only three years. Elizabeth Wand, a nurse from New York City, a single American woman of the Victorian age, arrived in our small town and began to assess its potential as a health spa. She had read something about the area in Harper's Magazine and decided that it sounded like a great location to look after 'nervous wrecks and convalescents'. At age forty, she walked away from fifteen years of nursing and became a pioneer in a new country, with a new language, setting up a health retreat.
For the entire article, click here: http://www.ballyhoo.ca/uploads/2/2/6/9/22695826/elizabeth_wand_put_ste._agathe_on_health_care_map.pdf