After completing two years’ teaching at Apto School, Catherine herself resigned, as she felt it was necessary to search for a post with a higher salary to meet the anticipated cost of tuition and board for the latter part of her sister Mamie’s high school education and her session at Normal School. Mamie, too, wanted to be a teacher. “Schools offering the highest salaries had to be hunted out by me and handled successfully. It was a must!”20 Mamie returned to Alliston to begin her secondary education at the local high school. Catherine had no qualms about the rightness of this decision, for “she was where she observed good people and saw their life-style and mingled with all kinds of pupils in an ordinary High School — but knew there were dangers.”21
Most of the school boards paying higher salaries were in districts far from the Alliston-Barrie area, or else they were facing emergency situations caused by unexpected teacher resignations in mid-year. As she began to search for her next position, Catherine carried with her good references from her last employers. The first was from the West Simcoe County inspector Thomas McKee:
I hereby certify that Miss Katie Donnelly taught a Public School in my Inspectorate for four years and during all that time performed every duty pertaining to her Profession with zeal, ability, and complete success.
I have very great pleasure in recommending her to any Board of Trustees desirous of securing the services of a skilful, able and Conscientious Teacher whose heart is in her work, and who knows how to bring her work to a successful issue.22
The Apto school board wrote:
The trustees of any school engaging the services of Miss K. Donnelly, as teacher, May not be anyway anxious as to the moral qualifications of this good young lady in the classroom or elsewhere. [She is] scrupulously exemplary. Mr. Mills, the Inspector is my authority for saying that she is an excellent teacher and a good proof I think, of her ability as a teacher after this year’s experience in the Apto School is the desire of the school section not to lose her.23
Mr. G.K. Mills himself wrote:
This is to certify that Miss Catherine Donnelly has taught in my inspectorate for the past two years. She has been an earnest, hardworking, and successful teacher. Both years she had large Entrance classes and had good success. Such was the work being done in the school and the influence of the teacher that several young people who had left school returned to take up Entrance work. For the past year and a half she has had a 5th class doing good work. She has succeeded in inspiring a number with a desire to take up higher work and they are now attending High School. Her work has been very much appreciated by the people of the community.
I can with confidence recommend her to any Board of Trustees as a capable and successful teacher.24
Thus well supported, Catherine Donnelly began her odyssey through the rural schools of Ontario. Her primary reason was to earn more money for her family’s responsibilities and to advance her own career through appointments with more responsibility. But she also later admitted that she was something of a “scamp,” in that she loved the adventure of new challenges and new places, and she adapted easily and well to new situations.
The new teaching position that Catherine found in January 1909 was, as she had anticipated, much farther afield than her previous Simcoe County posts. But it was a step up the professional ladder for her, since she was hired by the board of Forrester’s Falls to be the principal of their two-room school. This was a small community west of Ottawa in the Renfrew County North Inspectorate. There were no Catholic families in the community, and only one Catholic child attended the school; but it was the kind of assignment that Catherine was beginning to prefer. “Something in my letter of application appealed to the School Board members. They wanted a disciplinarian. I had written that I could do it — but I must have a way to get to Mass on Sundays. They were prompt to reply that they would provide a way.”25
Sure enough, when she arrived in January there was a team of horses and a cutter ready for her use, and at no expense to her. All that winter and spring she drove her team alone twelve miles every Sunday to the nearest Catholic church, which was across the Ottawa River at Portage du Fort in Quebec. She could not recall missing a single Sunday. Catherine attended church so faithfully, not only out of her personal religious conviction, but also because she felt that teachers, by their very lifestyle, should publicly exemplify their moral priorities. “Christian principles meticulously followed while living among the families and teaching school subjects which a completely-developed child must know are what produce a fruitful harvest.”26 The lesson being taught to her students by her example on Sundays should, she believed, be one which they could apply to their own lives. This was as important as her duty to guide her students through the regulated academic drills which were such an integral part of classroom teaching at that time.
She liked the local community and they liked her; the people were kind and appreciative. “In … Forrester’s Falls I received cooperation greater than in any other in many ways. Respect for my Christian principles was tops … Never have I enjoyed stauncher support. It was completely against their wishes when I finally accepted a school with a higher salary and resigned.”27
The school inspector, E.B. White, summed up the local feelings toward her: “I consider that Miss Donnelly is doing excellent work in the school and I would be sorry to see her leave my Inspectorate. She has shown herself a capable teacher in organization and in governing power. She has a good grasp of the subjects to be taught and a pleasant manner in presenting them to the class.”28
From 6 August to December 1909 Catherine next taught at the Killarney Public School, which was in an isolated community on the northwest coast of Georgian Bay. Her salary was around $500. In January 1910 she moved south to become a principal again, for six months, at a two-room school in Heidelberg, a German settlement near Waterloo. Her salary was about $525. In August she signed a contract to teach for a year at No. 1 Public School, Culross Township, a farming area in West Bruce County, where she boarded with one of the local farmers. Twenty-five students attended her school, and her salary was now $600. Then in August 1911 she was able to get a year’s contract in the same inspectorate at the Riversdale Public School near Chepstow, which paid her a salary of $650. A deciding factor in her getting this job was probably the excellent recommendation she was given by W.F. Bald, the public school inspector for West Bruce.29
The salary increase which she achieved with this move was especially important, as in September 1911 she enrolled Mamie in St. Joseph’s Academy in Toronto for her last year of high school. Her sister’s board and tuition for the year cost her $150.30 After paying for her own clothing and room and board, Catherine did not have much money to put aside to support Mamie’s tuition and board for Normal School, which they planned she would be attending the following year. Still, the elder sister felt her sacrifice was worth while, for Mamie was a good student, who would win the prize in English, donated by the Academy’s most illustrious graduate, Miss Gertrude Lawler.
An opportunity to regain the rank of principal caused Catherine to leave Riversdale after one year. In his glowing testimonial, Mr. Bald wrote: “I am sorry that you are leaving West Bruce Inspectorate and particularly Riversdale School. Wishing you every success in your work.”31
In August 1912 she accordingly moved to Manley in the East Bruce Inspectorate, not far from Seaforth, to be principal of a two-room school, again at