When Maurice Richard celebrated his 400th goal with the children of Sainte-Justine

When Maurice Richard scores his 400^e goal on December 18, 1954, in a 4 to 2 Canadian victory against Chicago, he chose to pay his $1,000 bonus to the Sainte-Justine hospital in Montreal.

In addition to marking the history of the National Hockey League on that day, the Rocket inaugurated a lasting friendship between the players of the Montreal team and the children’s hospital founded in 1907. Each year, during the holidays, the players du Canadiens go to sign autographs at the Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine hospital.

This is one of the anecdotes told in A story of the History of Sainte-Justinewhich has just appeared from the pen of one of its doctors, D^r Jean-François Chicoine.

“The history of this hospital is our history, our identity. I wanted to tell it like you tell a story,” says the pediatrician, who also asked Fred Pellerin to write the preface.

Family history

Himself born in a delivery room at the Mother-Child University Hospital Center, the official name of the pediatric hospital, the D^r Chicoine had a father who was a doctor who also devoted most of his career to it.

“My father worked with the founder, Justine Lacoste-Beaubien. That tells you how tight we are,” continues the author, who also writes dramas for television.

Saying he is blessed by the advances in medicine that have marked recent decades, diseases like leukemia that once killed children now display excellent survival rates, Dr.^r Chicoine is full of praise for the pioneers.

“The women who built this hospital did so at a time when they did not even have the right to vote,” he emphasizes, admiringly.

Patina of time

Since its founding in 1907, doctors have carried out multiple avant-garde interventions at Sainte-Justine, making this center one of the most renowned on the continent in terms of child care.

The book is not a long text, but a series of short stories enhanced with testimonies, all richly illustrated with period photographs.

The author insisted that the book be printed on slightly sepia-toned paper, reminiscent of the patina of time.

The words that come to him to summarize the message he wants to leave readers with about this 325-page work are “compassion” and “humanism”. “These are the values ​​that inhabited the builders and which continue to inspire,” he says.

Justine Lacoste-Beaubien, “man of the month”

The Sainte-Justine hospital was born from the fight of a woman who was able to rally supporters and elected officials to her cause: Justine Lacoste-Beaubien (1877-1967).

The sixth in a family of 13 children, she accompanied her mother to the dying at Notre-Dame Hospital in Montreal. She married the lawyer Louis de Gaspé Beaubien in 1899 and founded the Sainte-Justine hospital on November 30, 1907. She directed it for 40 years.

In January 1960, the magazine Commerce pays tribute to her by declaring her “man of the month”. She appeared on the front page of the magazine under this name: “Madame Louis de G. Beaubien”.