Description of Historic Place

Established in 1999, the Heritage Trail is located behind the Town Hall in Tracadie-Sheila. It starts at the Académie Ste-Famille and goes as far as the lepers’ cemetery, thereby recognizing the importance of the work of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint-Joseph in the region’s history.

Heritage Value

The Heritage Trail is designated a Local Historic Place for commemorating a significant part of the history of the former Village of Tracadie, now Tracadie-Sheila.

The Heritage Trail journeys through an important part of Tracadie’s history. The trail starts adjacent to the Ste-Famille Academy, which was built in 1910 and houses the Musée historique de Tracadie. The next stop is the cemetery of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint-Joseph. When these nuns arrived in Tracadie in 1865, they became pioneers in education and health, especially in the care of lepers. The third stop along the way is the Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes Grotto, built in 1946 by Sr. Hélène Rioux, a Religious Hospitaller who was partially blind. This work is a replica of a grotto in France where the Holy Virgin is said to have appeared. The fourth stop on the Sentier du Patrimoine is a wall of the old Hôtel-Dieu hospital, which burned down in 1943. The wall is hung with caducei, sculptures designating the different sections of the hospital. The Heritage Trail crosses the site of the former lazaretto and ends at the lepers’ cemetery, where 59 persons of different nationalities are buried.

Source : Tracadie-Sheila Town Hall, Historic Places File #29

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements that describe Sentier du Patrimoine include:
- location on the site of the old hospital and the former lazaretto;
- proximity of the trail to Ste-Famile Academy, the cemetery of the Religious Hospitallers and the lepers’ cemetery;
- explanatory panels at each site;
- caducei from the former hospital that were conserved after it was destroyed;
- tree-lined trail of 477 metres;
- Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes Grotto.