About Our monastery

Contemplative nuns of the Order of Preachers (aka Dominicans), our monastery's first sisters came to Canada in 1999 at the request of then-Master General Timothy Radcliffe OP. Queen of Peace Monastery, at the base of Cloudburst  Mountain in the Upper Squamish Valley, was consecrated to God on the Feast of St. Dominic (August 8) 2012. We are now 16 sisters and candidates aged 30 - 85, with sisters from Canada, France, Africa and America. Like the first community of Apostles, we are gathered by God to seek His Face in prayer, common life, study and work, asking to "receive the Word from God the Father with one faith, contemplate Him with one heart, and praise Him with one voice". (Constitutions of the Nuns 3.1)

As contemplative nuns, our primary “apostolate” is to be prayer, with and in Jesus Christ, at the heart of the Church and the world. Our entire day is called to be a continuous prayer and praise of God. We strive to move continually in God's Presence in the liturgy of Mass and the Divine Office, in manual and intellectual labour, in the common joy of fraternal life. We also have times of greater solitude when we seek, ponder and call upon God so that "the Word proceeding from the mouth of God may not return to Him empty but may accomplish those things for which it was sent" (Is. 55:11). "Like Mary, [we] too strive to be a “stairway” by which God descends to encounter humanity, and humanity ascends to encounter God and to contemplate His face in the face of Christ." (Pope Francis, Vultum Dei quaerere) As members of a mendicant order, we make our living by the work of our hands and by the generosity of friends near and far.

In all things, seeking to love God and our neighbour, at the heart of the Church and the world, we pray that God's mercy will come upon us all, and that Christ's own peace, "which surpasses all understanding" (Phil 4:7), will dwell in our hearts and heal our fractured world.