Pauline Vanier

Pauline Vanier, born Pauline Archer in Montreal in 1898, was a Canadian humanitarian and the wife of Georges Vanier, who served as Governor General of Canada. She was educated by the Congregation of Notre-Dame in Montreal and grew up in a French-Canadian Catholic family; her father, Charles Archer, was a judge of the Superior Court of Quebec. In 1921 she married Georges-Philéas Vanier, a lawyer and officer of the Royal 22e Régiment who had been severely wounded in the First World War. The couple had five children, among them Jean Vanier, later founder of the L’Arche communities, and Thérèse Vanier, a physician who helped establish L’Arche in the United Kingdom. Catholic faith, family life, and public duty remained closely joined throughout her years as a diplomatic and viceregal spouse.

She accompanied her husband through a succession of military and diplomatic appointments and lived for extended periods in Europe, notably in London and Paris. During the Second World War Georges Vanier represented Canada to the Free French and later served as Canadian ambassador to France. In those years Pauline Vanier worked with the Red Cross and devoted herself to refugees and the war-wounded, visiting camps and hospitals in liberated France and helping to organize relief. Contemporary accounts emphasize both her formality in official settings and her personal attention to people in distress, as well as her ease in French and English.

In 1959 Georges Vanier became the first French-Canadian Governor General of Canada after Confederation, and Pauline Vanier assumed the role of viceregal consort. She travelled widely in Canada, supported charitable organizations, and was known for visits to hospitals, prisons, and remote communities. She received numerous honours, including appointment as a Companion of the Order of Canada, and she served as Chancellor of the University of Ottawa. After Georges Vanier died in office in 1967, she remained a public figure of standing but gradually withdrew from official life.

In the early 1970s she moved to Trosly-Breuil in France to live at L’Arche, the community for people with intellectual disabilities founded by her son Jean Vanier. There she spent her last two decades sharing the ordinary life of the community. She died in 1991. Although she and her husband were long held up in Canadian Catholic circles as models of Christian marriage and public service, and interest was at times expressed in a possible cause for beatification, she has not been beatified or canonized. Her historical reputation rests on her wartime relief work, her years as a national public figure, and her late identification with L’Arche.