To Do and to Endure. Jeanne R. Beck

realize that what was missing in the settlements was the communal bond which is created when a group recognizes that they have a mutual religious faith in a power which can lift them above their obsession with material security. Catherine and Mary were not unsympathetic to the immigrants’ fierce drive to succeed. They had seen how precarious was the life of the rancher and the farmer. Illness, accidents, crop disease or bad weather could destroy their prosperity overnight. Several people in the community had died, and many more of them had come close to dying, to leaving behind all that they had striven for. Yet the survivors did not seem prepared to face the fact that even if they had escaped this time, they too would eventually die. Their lack of a spiritual preparation was of great concern to Catherine and Mary. Could any community spirit or bonding ever develop in such a religious void? They had discovered that there were quite a few Catholics in the area, but the majority no longer practised their religion.

      This was particularly true of many of the immigrants from Central Europe where Catholicism had been the religion of the majority. They had come as foreigners into rural communities where, unlike Europe, there were very few Catholic churches and “no [Catholic] missionary workers anywhere near these people.”⁷ There were Protestant churches in the area, and although their religious services were unlike what they were used to, some Catholic settlers had been attracted. With no church leadership of their own, it was not long before many of the European Catholic arrivals had begun to disregard their own spiritual heritage, and concentrate solely on achieving security and prosperity. The two women thus concluded that the settlers could not really be blamed for their indifference to religion. It was their Church which was at fault, for most of its resources had been allocated to the prairie cities. It was true that for many years some male religious orders had been working among the Indian tribes, but the female religious orders had been establishing their hospitals and schools in the urban settlements from Winnipeg to Victoria. The needs of the Catholic country folk had been largely ignored, with the result that “the spiritual condition in the homes was like a barren place, a Godless foreign country.”⁸ As Catherine said, “the worldliness and lack of Faith made one homesick.”⁹

      Catherine and Mary also concluded that although it was their own strong constitutions which had enabled them to work so hard during those weeks of crisis, it was their own deep religious faith that had enabled them to ignore their fatigue and continue to work even in the most desperate situations. They appreciated more than ever that they had been raised in God-fearing families and communities who had taught their faith to them as children. After they had left home and begun teaching in Ontario, they had always found a supportive group of people who believed as they did in the worth of religious faith and practice. Church buildings, clergy, and religious teachers had always been available. Catherine was particularly perturbed when she discovered her Church’s neglect of the rural West, for she felt that this did not bode well for the future of the people, the Church or the nation.

      What could be done about it? Each woman admitted that during that autumn they had, unknown to each other, “been doing some special thinking.” Had they saved people’s lives only “for them to go back to cold paganism?” Most of the Catholics they had met “had become quite lax … seldom got to Mass, and didn’t seem to try any too hard.”¹⁰ They had both begun to think more seriously about their futures in the light of their heightened awareness of the reality of their faith in God. Was it His will that they continue teaching as laywomen? Catherine said that because she was not satisfied to continue simply teaching school in such conditions, she had even written to her sister Tess in France, asking if she should give up teaching and undertake to train as a nurse. Tess had not been very encouraging, pointing out that she was now over thirty and the hours in training were long and arduous. Furthermore if Catherine ever married, she would have to give up working as a nurse or a teacher, even if her skills were urgently needed. Should she therefore commit her life solely to teaching and working with people? If so, did this mean that she should join a religious community dedicated to teaching in these areas where the Church’s presence was so urgently required? In religious parlance, this meant accepting that her present spiritual unease was a sign that she had a vocation to be a religious — to be a sister.

      It was a very serious decision, one which Catherine would find particularly difficult to think through. Since 1905 she had worked hard to fulfil her responsibility to support her father and educate her sisters. But her father still needed help, and she was the only one in the family who could give it. He had already been saddened by her departure; he was not in good health and he was lonely. Was it right that she change the course of her life at this stage? Up to this time she had never considered becoming a nun, and she was ignorant of the particulars of convent life. Nuns had never played any role in her education. As a child she had attended “a small public school two miles away — never a Catholic teacher … never a nun anywhere near except when they came for my father to drive them around to collect for the House of Providence. Nuns were something very mysterious and austere, in my mind, but high above other women.”¹¹ She did not even know how to get information about the work of the various religious orders.¹² Catherine had been pleased when Mamie had been accepted by the Community of St. Joseph, but she had also insisted that her sister become professionally qualified as a teacher before she applied to enter the order. Young Mamie, as Sister Justina, now lived according to a strict Holy Rule. Its details were carefully guarded as private information within the order, but the Rule was designed to keep the sisters physically and spiritually separated from the secular world. They were not allowed to eat meals away from the convent, or leave it for any reason without permission, or unaccompanied. Personal relations, even within the convent, were carefully controlled, and visits home were rare and of very short duration, except for exceptional circumstances.¹³ Catherine was an extroverted, gregarious person; she prized her friends and sensed that she would not find it easy to give up the emotional obligations which deep friendships entailed. Nevertheless, she decided to investigate if she could “join some Order which could be induced to come out there.”¹⁴

      There was also a final factor about which little is known, but which might have been an additional cause of her concern. In 1916, when she was teaching in Caledon, Ontario, Catherine had written to Neil McNeil, the Archbishop of Toronto, requesting that he help a Mr. Wellington Mackenzie “with his case.” She stated that she had “taken time to study well, the circumstances of his case, and even if I were not promised to him in marriage, would do all in my power to help him.” She said she believed him “ worthy of any assistance you may be able to give him” and that she “admired his patience and deep seriousness.”¹⁵ In the letter, the problem which concerned them was never identified, but it was clear that Archbishop McNeil was already apprised of it. To date no other record has been discovered which discusses Catherine’s relationship with this man, or mentions that she once made a promise to marry. But the clarity and sincerity of her short, hand-written letter testifies to its authenticity. If she had still been engaged to him in January 1919, she was faced with a very difficult decision indeed. Even if the engagement had by then been terminated, it is proof that, up to that time, she had not ruled out the possibility of marriage.

      In an effort to sort her way through her personal dilemma, Catherine decided to search for a position where she could teach and “be able to contact an experienced and wise priest. (I had the Bishop in mind) about entering a community which would work in the abandoned west.”¹⁶ Mary was quite happy to come-with her. She did not wish to return alone to the Stettler district when the schools were reopened, and they both needed their salaries. By Christmas 1919 they had their next jobs in hand. Catherine chose the principalship of a Catholic school, Sacred Heart School in West Calgary, and Mary O’Connor was hired by the Innisfail Public School Board to teach in their high school.

      Catherine was not long on her new job before she discovered she had fallen into a touchy situation. “A neglected school, the pastor of the parish overseas … The teachers on the staff were bitterly dissatisfied with their salaries and general conditions. The discipline was something not to be described in a few sentences.” The board did not support the staff because “it consisted of volunteer business men who were over-ruled by Bishop McNally.”¹⁷ He was a “domineering Bishop, very conservative, Dictator type — little sympathy for mere women teachers — one who wanted to get teaching nuns to take schools and