In 1843, Sir James Douglas, chief factor for the Hudson's Bay Company in the Pacific Northwest, established Fort Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. 

The first Catholic Bishop, Modeste Demers, arrived in the 1850's to take over his newly established See which stretched from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Arctic. Having neither priests nor other missionaries for the apostolic work he envisioned, he left for Montreal to seek help. 

As a result, four Sisters of Saint Ann joined with the Bishop and his other recruits for the Pacific Coast, travelling there by a round-about route through the Isthmus of Panama. After two months, the SS Seabird  glided into the Victoria harbour on Saturday, June 5, 1858. The Sisters' first home was a rundown, empty log cabin, which the Bishop had previously purchased from Leon Morrell. On Monday, the Sisters opened their home as a school for the local children. The cabin was enlarged in November to accommodate more students, including orphans, and to receive a sick woman.

In 1859, and again in 1863, more Sisters arrived from Quebec. With their coming, further expansion was possible. The Sisters began missionary work up-Island, on the mainland and even into Alaska. Education and health care were primary needs in the developing frontier. The Sisters came to know and love the families of the Aboriginal population, the miners, farmers, merchants and traders along the Pacific Rim.  In 1871, a new brick structure was erected on Humboldt Street.  Passing years saw additions to what became Saint Ann's Academy:  the Administration Centre for the Sisters in the West, a boarding school for an ever growing student body, a Novitiate and an Infirmary. 

In 1864, the Sisters went to Duncan (Cowichan), where many First Nations people lived.  Here the Sisters opened a school especially for the Aboriginal girls of the Cowichan area.  Nanaimo, a coal mining town, was another notable foundation (1877) on Vancouver Island. Nanaimo became a girls' boarding school and Duncan, after 1904, became a boys' boarding school. 

The first mission on the mainland was on the delta of the Fraser River at a place now called New Westminster (1865). There the Sisters opened Saint Ann's Academy which attracted both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal girls. The success of this school encouraged the Sisters in 1868 to respond to a need for someone to care for Aboriginal girls at an already established school, St. Mary's Mission, Mission City, B.C.

In 1875, at the request of James S. Helmcken, M.D., and Bishop Charles John Seghers, the Sisters agreed to open a hospital in Victoria. While the two-storey building was under construction, the Sisters sought advice and direction from medical professionals and studied health care requisites. By 1876, Saint Joseph's Hospital was ready to receive patients. This was none too soon, for the first patient was admitted during the opening celebrations.  In 1900, a School of Nursing was established in connection with the expanded hospital.

Elsewhere, the Gold Rush years necessitated hospital care for miners and their families. The Sisters began a hospital in Juneau, Alaska, in 1886, and in 1898 went up the Yukon River to Dawson, in the Klondike, where a typhoid epidemic was raging. There, the Sisters accepted to continue the hospital work begun by Father William Judge, SJ.  In both places, and elsewhere in the North, schools and other ministries were initiated.

Meanwhile, education and health care expanded across British Columbia: Williams Lake, Kamloops, Vancouver, Campbell River, Oliver, Nelson (to name a few).  For a time, the sisters taught in Port Angeles, Washington.  In more recent years, ministries have broadened into a variety of services.  Doors have opened in such places as the Northwest Territories, Alberta, Ontario, and some of the Western States. The Sisters of Saint Ann of Saint Joseph's Province continue to walk in the footsteps of our Foundress and to journey with the people of God.

In the same response to the call of the Spirit, some Sisters transfer temporarily to serve in Haiti, Chile, and the Cameroon. There is also an interchange among the Provinces of the Congregation to make best use of each Sister's gifts.