Information and letters from Catherine’s Alliston connexions and information on her early family life were provided by Mrs. Mary Munnoch, Mrs Margaret Donnelly, Mrs. Theresa Quayle Reich, Mrs. Shirley Gibson and Catherine’s nephew Robert Gifford. Catherine’s cousin, Mrs. Betty Ogle of Calgary, provided gracious hospitality, a splendid interview and a treasure trove of Catherine’s letters.
I received helpful information and advice, along with large doses of encouragement from Dr. Terence Fay S.J., Father Joseph O’Neill, Dr. Margaret Denis, Father Kenneth Bernard, Sister Veronica O’Reilly CSJ, Father Ronald Synnott, Maurice Villeneuve, Lorene Hanley Duquin, and Sister Barbara Frank, SSND.
As the written manuscript evolved I was given the priceless gift of having it read by Dr. Goldwin S. French and Dr. Maurice Careless. Their suggestions and advice were invaluable, and I do thank them for bringing their wisdom, their vast knowledge and experience, and their acute sensitivity to the art of writing history to their critiques of this work.
The final preparations for publication were done by Diane Mew, whose copy-editing skills and dedication to the correction of the text, brought order to my frequently chaotic footnotes and inconsistent form. She and Heather Duncan, who prepared the computer disk, formed a team which, with unfailing good humour and skill worked late on many nights to meet the publisher’s deadline.
Finally, very special thanks are due my husband Robin, whose constant enthusiasm for the project, and astute observations on the text, were of value equal to his skills at keeping the home fires burning while I was utterly absorbed by the epic story of this woman who accomplished so much and endured to the end.
FOREWORD
In her portrayal of the life of Sister Catherine Donnelly, founder of the Sisters of Service, author Jeanne Beck has succeeded in weaving a tapestry rich in texture, broad in scope and deeply revealing of the character of a memorable Canadian woman. To a remarkable degree the thematic details of Sr. Catherine’s life and times, 1884-1983, reflect those of her country and church. These details cluster around a unifying triad consisting of her sense of space, mission and self.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Canadian energies focused on twin developments: the movement from dominantly rural to urban populations and pursuits, and the exploitation of the vast expanses of the West. The tasks associated with incorporating millions of immigrants included assisting with the multiple adaptations to foreign cultural, linguistic, educational, technological and political expressions. All of this in a time before social workers, or the array of government-assisted social programmes, which would develop later in the century.
Catherine was born shortly after the First Council of the Vatican (1870) and lived well beyond the Second (1962-1965). Until the Second Vatican Council the dominant model of religious life experienced and expressed by Roman Catholic communities of women in Canada was the monastic model. It is important to recognize the normative dominance of this model of religious life in order to appreciate the myriad of difficulties she experienced in proposing to pioneer the implementation of a novel and opposing approach to service which her missionary vision entailed.
In the preceding century the Catholic Church had responded to the increasing challenges of the secularized and materialist world view promoted by Enlightenment philosophies and hostile political agendas. The highly centralized and rationalized re-structuring of the Church which resulted, succeeded in providing clear identity and focused direction. But this was at the expense of developing a non-traditional character which tended to be defensive, reactive and hostile in turn towards innovation in general. This was particularly so with regard to alterations in the form and function of women’s communities.
This ecclesial conservatism was reinforced by cultural expectations resistant to the emergence of women from private sphere to public space, at least through the first half of the century. In fact, taking into account both ecclesial experience and cultural expectation, hindsight suggests that Catherine’s success in winning acceptance, or at least toleration, of adaptations with regard to such things as habit, residence and form of ministry, are really remarkable. Such contextualization should not underrate the immediacy and depth of successive painful passages and personal humiliations. It should, however, validate the clarity of her vision with regard to the needs of the mission, and highlight the resilient sense of self which sustained that vision in the face of challenges from landscape, religious institution and social convention.
The biography is refreshingly candid with regard to conflicts and tensions internal to character, institution and her own religious community. The treatment is both sensitive and critical throughout and the result is a three-dimensional life, personal in detail and instructive with regard to the true measure of its subject: a woman sacramentally rooted in time and place and deeply moved by a vision of service and human care founded on the love of her God.
Brian F. Hogan, C.S.B.
Dean, Faculty of Theology
University of St. Michael’s College
Toronto, Ontario
CHAPTER 1
THE LAND OF HER YOUTH: THE ADJALA COMMUNITY
In many of the Brief Biographical Sketches which Catherine Donnelly wrote throughout her long life, she frequently referred to her belief that the land and the attitudes of the people who tilled it were vital determinants in both an individual’s and a nation’s character and destiny. Thus it seems suitable to begin her story with a description of her own family heritage, of the land and the people of her community.
The area of Ontario where she was born in 1884, and considered her home territory for her first thirty-four years, was Simcoe County. It extended from Newmarket to its southwest boundary at Mono Mills, north to Nottawasaga Bay, east to Lakes Simcoe and Couchiching, and north to the Severn River. In 1794 Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe had discussed purchase of some of that land with the Lake Simcoe Chippewa Indians, and negotiations and treaties were completed by the British government by 1818. The county had been surveyed and was made available for settlement by the time the first immigrants arrived from Northern Ireland in the 1820s. They were mainly farmers, and although they were not destitute, they possessed more optimism and determination than money and worldly goods. In religious allegiance, they were a mixed lot; but Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Quakers and other Protestant groups lived in the new settlements in relative harmony. One contributing factor may have been that the immigrants could acquire more acreage of freehold land than was ever dreamed possible in Ireland. There the tenant farmer had to support his family on five or ten acres of leased land, which he would never be able to purchase. His life was an unending struggle with little prospect of advancement. For these tenant farmers their real security came from their strong kinship ties and a devotion to the religious traditions in which they were raised. This was the glue which held their society together and enabled them to endure, whether their religious allegiance was Roman Catholic or Protestant. However, one legacy from the stormy history of Ireland was that, living as they had in close proximity to their neighbours for many generations, the Northern Irish were very conscious of their own religious and class differences. In some of the early settlements in various parts of Ontario, around Peterborough for example, the old-country tensions and prejudices were carried into the new lands, where they lasted for long years.
When more immigrants arrived during the 1840s at Mono Township, adjacent to Adjala Township where the Donnellys settled, their futures seemed much more hopeful. Uncleared land could be bought from 5 to 15 shillings an acre.1 The settlers’ social and religious