The school for nurses that was established at the Verdun Hospital was one of the reasons why such a large community of Magdalen Islanders settled in Verdun—because the services offered at these health facilities were required to be bilingual. However, French was the language of instruction in Québec's nursing schools and so Acadians from New Brunswick and the Magdalen Islands had to be called upon. Most of them had taken their courses in Moncton in both official languages.
With the nurses came hundreds of families of Magdalen Islanders within a period of some thirty years. In addition to finding work, most of these women remained in Verdun to live and set up a family. So many, in fact, that in 1960, approximately 1,000 families of Magdalen Islanders were living in Montréal, and mainly in Verdun and Côte-Saint-Paul. Today, the Verdun territory has the largest community of Magdalen Islanders outside the Magdalen Islands. To pay tribute to this community, a park in Verdun, bounded by rue Wellington, and boulevard LaSalle and located at the beginning of rue Régina, is called Parc des Madelinots today.