Fonds

Murielle Mailloux was born August 10, 1942, in the parish of Immaculée-Conception and grew up in Ville Saint Pierre (now part of the Montreal borough of Lachine). The oldest of five girls, she also had two brothers.

In the early 1960s, she got involved with the Association des guides catholiques du Canada. In 1961, this organization had replaced the Fédération des guides catholiques de la Province de Québec (founded in 1938 and affiliated with the Canadian Girl Guides Association). She began as a senior guide, the usual title for girls over the age of 17. She went on to become an assistant leader and a commissioner. She participated in several camps with the 47^th Company Lachine in the parish of Très-Saint-Sacrement. She was also a commissioner in the neighbouring parish of Coeur-Immaculé-de-Marie (Côte-Saint-Paul).

Murielle Mailloux began work as a secretary to pay for her studies, from 1963 to 1966, at the nursing school run by Notre-Dame de l'Espérance hospital (Ville St. Laurent). Founded in 1922 by the Soeurs de l'Espérance to train nursing nuns, the school began admitting laypeople in 1943.

After obtaining her diploma, she worked as a nurse in several Quebec healthcare institutions, including Montreal's Saint-Luc Hospital and the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu mental hospital (now known as the Montreal Mental Health University Institute) in the east end of Montreal.

Murielle Mailloux continued her education, earning a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Université de Montréal in the late 1960s. She later went on to receive a Master of Public Administration from the École nationale d'administration publique (1980). Highlights of her long, wide-ranging career include her efforts to restore the normal operations of an Outaouais hospital that had been placed under trusteeship. She was active in the Quebec Order of Nurses from 1977 to 1985, notably as a professional development advisor and Chair of the Educational Assessment Committee. She also helped reorganize the professional examination procedure and worked on updating the profession. In the mid-1980s, she worked on the implementation of the 911 system and the Info-Santé health information line in Montreal. Her work has been recognized with several professional awards, including the Abbott Clinical Innovation Grand Prize in 1996.

In the 1990s, she was in charge of nursing care at the Montreal North CLSC. In 1997, at the age of 55, she took early retirement. However, she returned to nursing several years later, working at the long-term care centre Vigi Santé (CHSLD) in Pierrefonds and then as a staff nurse and assistant head nurse at the infirmary of the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Anne in Lachine. Murielle Mailloux finally retired in 2014, at the age of 71.