It all began with a knock on a door...

In the fall of 1906, due to poor water and sanitation conditions in riverside work camps, there was a terrible typhoid outbreak in Saskatoon. Father H. Vachon and Father Joseph Paille had been taking care of very ill typhoid patients in the rectory of the new city's Catholic church, St. Paul's. Typhoid was a problem every year, but in 1906 the outbreak was taking a worse than usual toll.

Saskatoon was a quickly growing city – settlers were arriving, construction was beginning to boom, there was a great deal of optimism about the future but the infrastructure couldn't keep up with the pace of growth of the pioneer community.

Father Paille answered the knock on the rectory door on the afternoon of September 29th to find two Grey Nuns, Sister Phaneuf and Sister Guay. The sisters had been traveling across the prairies collecting alms for their mission at St. Boniface in Manitoba and stopped at St. Paul's rectory on their way through Saskatoon as a courtesy. For the priests struggling to cope with the patients in their care, the arrival of these sisters was providential. They implored the sisters to stay and nurse the patients.

With permission from their St. Boniface house, the sisters' course changed direction and they stayed in Saskatoon to help in the crisis. Before the sisters' arrival, Father Vachon had sent word to the Mother House of the Grey Nuns in Montreal begging them to establish a hospital in the little prairie city. With two members of the order caring for the sick, Father Vachon was part of a delegation that traveled to Montreal to plead Saskatoon's case. The request was granted and on January 21, 1907 Sister St. Dosithée (the first superior), Sister Mailoux and Sister Blakely left Montreal to establish the new hospital in Saskatoon.

The sisters had the blessing of their Mother House to establish a Grey Nuns hospital, but a building was needed. One of the first medical men in the area, Dr. J.H.C. Willoughby had homesteaded west of Saskatoon. He agreed to sell his two-story farmhouse on Pleasant Hill to the sisters. As Superior and administrator of the new hospital, Sister St. Dosithée oversaw the conversion of the house into a hospital. On March 10, 1907, the 17-bed hospital was ready for patients. In honour of the first Catholic parish in Saskatoon, it was named St. Paul's Hospital.