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Lepers of Tracadie

In the nineteenth century, Canadians with leprosy were forcibly incarcerated. One of they places they were held was at a leprosarium in Tracadie, New Brunswick, where conditions were grim.

Over time, fear of this disease subsided and the once-frightening terms ‘leprosy’ and ‘lepers’ were retired. It's now called Hansen's disease after Armaur Hansen, who in 1873 discovered the bacterium which caused the condition. Those once condemned to be isolated and abandoned are now cured with powerful drugs.

Today, Hansen's disease goes largely unnoticed in Canada. To learn more about the history of this illness, read “The Lepers of Tracadie“ in the October/November 2009 issue of The Beaver. To view more photographs, visit: The Leprosy of Tracadie.

The images below are courtesy of the Historical Museum of Tracadie:

• A woman with leprosy in Tracadie, 1922.


• The first resident pastor of Tracadie, François Xavier Lafrance.


• A group of lepers at the Tracadie lazaretto, 1868.


• Canadians with leprosy today are no longer isolated the way Charles and Samuel were in 1916.

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