We celebrate a veritable panoply of saints today: In Canada, we have the memorial of Saint Marguerite D’Youville (+1771), a lovely French Canadian mademoiselle, who married young to a dissolute man, Francois D’Youville, a dissipated bootlegger who sold liquor to the easily-addicted Natives, and would disappear for long periods. He did not live long, but they did have six children together, before his death.
By the time she was 30, Marguerite had lost her husband, her father, and four of her children, who died in infancy. She could have despaired, and lost herself in the bottle, but, instead, corresponded with the
