In 1692 he devoted his large fortune to the foundation of a hospital and a school, and received numerous gifts from charitable persons.  Six hospitallers of the order of St. Joseph of the Cross, commonly called Freres Charron, took the gown in 1701, and pronounced their vows in 1704, but the following year they ceased to receive novices.  The minister, M. de Pontchartrain, thought “the care of the sick is a task better adapted to women than to men, notwithstanding the spirit of charity which may animate the latter,” and he forbade the wearing of the costume adopted by the hospitallers.  Francois Charron, seeing his work nullified, yielded to the inevitable, and confined himself to the training of teachers for country parishes.  The existence of this establishment, abandoned by the mother country to its own strength, was to become more and more precarious and feeble.  Almost all the hospitallers left the institution to re-enter the world; the care of the sick was entrusted to the Sisters.  Francois Charron made a journey to France in order to obtain the union for the purposes of the hospital of the Brothers of St. Joseph with the Society of St. Sulpice, but he failed in his efforts.  He obtained, nevertheless, from the regent an annual subvention of three thousand francs for the training of school-masters (1718).  He busied himself at once with finding fitting recruits, and collected eight.  The elder sister of our excellent normal schools of the present day seemed then established on solid foundations, but it was not to be so.  Brother Charron died on the return voyage, and his institution, though seconded by the Seminary of St. Sulpice, after establishing Brothers in several villages in the environs of Montreal, received from the court a blow from which it did not recover:  the regent forbade the masters to assume a uniform dress and to pledge themselves by simple vows.  The number of the hospitallers decreased from year to year, and in 1731 the royal government withdrew from them the annual subvention which supported them, however poorly.  Finally their institution, after vainly attempting to unite with the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, ceased to exist in 1745.

Mgr. de Laval so greatly admired the devotion of these worthy men that he exclaimed one day:  “Let me die in the house of these Brothers; it is a work plainly inspired by God.  I shall die content if only in dying I may contribute something to the shaping or maintenance of this establishment.”  Again he wrote:  “The good M. Charron gave us last year one of their Brothers, who rendered great service to the Mississippi Mission, and he has furnished us another this year.  These acquisitions will spare the missionaries much labour....  I beg you to show full gratitude to this worthy servant of God, who is as affectionately inclined to the missions and missionaries as if he belonged to our body.  We have even the plan, as well as he, of forming later a community of their Brothers to aid the missions and accompany the missionaries on their journeys.  He goes to France and as far as Paris to find and bring back with him some good recruits to aid him in forming a community.  Render him all the services you can, as if it were to missionaries themselves.  He is a true servant of God.”  Such testimony is the fairest title to glory for an institution.