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CHAPTER 2

LIFE AS A TEACHER IN ONTARIO, 1904–1918

When Catherine Donnelly Left Alliston to attend the Toronto Normal School in September 1904, she left behind the quiet routine of her parent’s farm home, her younger sisters, Teresa (Tess) age fourteen, and Mary Loretto (Mamie) age ten. Her grandmother, Mary Ann Donnelly, had lived with them until her death the previous year, shortly after passing her hundredth birthday. Her mother had cared for her mother-in-law all her married life. Now she herself was not well and needed help to care for their home.

The decision to stop teaching and take the year of study in Toronto to fulfil the required Normal School year had not been an easy one for Catherine. Tess was boarding in Alliston while attending high school, and had a very good teacher. If Catherine left, she would have to stay home, as she would be the only person available to look after their mother. Was it right to interrupt her sister’s schooling and leave her with such a heavy responsibility at that time? In one way, the circumstances were right for her to go to Toronto because she had been asked to share lodging with her friend Nettie, who would also be fulfilling the mandatory year’s attendance at the Toronto Normal School for the Ontario permanent teaching certificate.

When Catherine sought her mother’s advice, the sick woman had replied, “No, you go, you know what you can do.” They agreed that it was important that she obtain professional qualifications because she could command a higher salary and be eligible for advancement.¹ Moreover, Catherine’s mother had always approved of her friendship with the Wrights, and felt that she would benefit from living with such a congenial room-mate. Sharing a room also meant that Catherine’s meagre funds would go further.

Many years later Catherine recalled the importance of this decision to seize the opportunity to deepen her relationship with the daughters of the Anglican rector:

Nettie Wright was just 2 days younger than me and was a great Christian — one of great physical beauty too — as well as spiritual strength. Nettie Wright and her sister Amy too, were at Alliston School with me and were my best friends — continuing through my life. Nettie Wright and Amy were faithful admirers of the S.O.S. work and often said so. Nettie died May 28, 1974, 90 years old. They were truly Christians of a very noble type.²

Catherine worked hard in Toronto, and was enjoying her year when, shortly before she was to write her final examinations in May, she was unexpectedly called home. Her mother’s illness had been diagnosed as tuberculosis. The doctor said he could do nothing to save her and she required more care. Catherine was devastated; now she would not be able to complete her school year. Nevertheless, she prepared to leave Toronto immediately. Her problem was solved by the compassion of the Normal School principal, William Scott, who was sympathetic when she told him her plight. Her marks to date were excellent, and so he granted her full credit for the year’s practical work, waived her final examinations, and certified that she would receive the Ontario permanent teaching certificate in June. To the end of her days, Catherine Donnelly always recalled his kindness with gratitude.

Catherine returned to Alliston to a deeply disturbed household. Apparently she had not comprehended the hopelessness of the situation when the doctor had discovered the then fatal disease a few months earlier. As her father reeled from the shock, friends and relatives persuaded him that he would not be able to carry on the farm without his wife, or make the arrangements for his two younger daughters to attend high school in Alliston. Their mother had always attended to such things. He had decided to sell the farm and move into Alliston.³

The major factor in making this decision was probably his concern that his fifty-acre farm was heavily mortgaged,⁴ and it was unlikely that, at the age of fifty-nine, he would ever be able to pay his debts. In her memoirs, Catherine never mentioned the crushing mortgage, but she did refer many times to the shortage of money when she was growing up, and attributed it to her father’s “bad business ventures,” and the periodic economic depressions which afflicted the Ontario farm economy in the late nineteenth century. According to the old provincial directories, Hugh Donnelly was a woollen factor as well as a farmer — that is, a person who dealt in wool futures by buying up the fleeces from the farmers before the mills had established the yearly buying price. If the woollen factor received less money when he sold the wool to the mill than he had already paid the farmers, he could be in serious financial trouble.⁵ Land records in the Ontario Archives show a continuing series of smaller loans against the Donnelly property for many years, and even though they were paid off, they indicate a chronic cash shortage.

Even in her old age Catherine still recalled the sale of the farm with sadness. She felt that if she and her sisters had been given the chance, they could have managed to run the farm and thus keep the land and the old homestead she had loved. As she ruefully remarked to her nephew, “I thought I could teach near home and come home on weekends. The neighbours didn’t think it would do for us girls to be out harvesting and ploughing — everyone thought so.”⁶ Yet in the circumstances of farm work and teachers’ incomes in 1905, the local Alliston neighbours were probably right.

The terms of sale had permitted the Donnellys to remain on the farm for a time. During the summer and autumn of 1905 Catherine struggled to look after her dying mother and keep the farm household going. During this period Catherine expressed to her mother her gratitude for urging her to attend school in Toronto. The suffering woman knew that she was going to die soon and had accepted it, but she was very distressed about leaving her two younger daughters before they had completed their education. Catherine allayed her mother’s fears about their futures by promising that she would provide for her sisters and see that they completed their education. Although Catherine wrote of her father’s grief and loneliness with pity, and described him as “dear” and “hard-working,” she never referred to him as being helpful or supportive during the long ordeal of waiting for her mother to die from “the wasting disease.” She described her mother as “wonderful, deeply religious, actively Christian, self-sacrificing, a loving mother, loved by our neighbours.”⁷

A small news item in the Alliston Herald announced that on 20 November 1905,

A sad affliction visited the home of Mr. Hugh Donnelly, Tossorontio, on Monday at noon, when Mrs. Donnelly passed away after a lengthy illness. The deceased was a woman who was held in very high esteem by all who knew her and will be mourned by a large circle of friends. She is survived by her husband, and three daughters, who have the sympathy of the community in their sad loss.⁸

While still mourning the sad loss, Catherine had to start preparing immediately to resume her teaching career, as her family needed her income. Only two weeks after the funeral, she obtained a character reference from her parish priest, Father I.F. Gibney:

I have much pleasure in testifying to the good moral character of the bearer, Miss Catherine Donnelly, whom I have known for years.

She has good credentials as a Teacher, and I feel convinced that she will give good satisfaction in that capacity.⁹

In April 1906 Hugh Donnelly and his three daughters moved to Alliston, and James Quayle, to whom the farm had been sold, took over the property. (The Quayle family still owns the land; the old farmhouse was destroyed by fire in 1918.) Catherine did not move in with her family because she was successful in finding a position for the final two months of the year (May and June) at Central Public School in Galt, as the teacher of the boys in the “slow learner class.” This brief teaching assignment she always regarded as one of the most fortuitous of her life, because it was in Galt that she met and arranged to board with the MacDonnell family. Robert MacDonnell was an accountant, and a successful businessman. His wife Irene was a warm-hearted motherly person, and they both took to Catherine immediately. Their two daughters, Achsah and Ruth, were of an age with Catherine, and in her two months’ stay in their home an enduring friendship was created which was a great support and joy to Catherine all her life.

The MacDonnells were all deeply devout Baptists, and Catherine was helped by their sympathy and understanding at such a difficult time in her life. Even more meaningful for her was their sincere acceptance and appreciation of her religious allegiance as an equally devout Roman Catholic. Like her Alliston friends, the Wrights, she found that the faith and moral outlook which they all held in common bonded them together as Christians in a mutual love and respect for each other which transcended their denominational differences. These and other friendships which she had made outside the Catholic community became the source of Catherine’s fervent belief in the value and necessity of ecumenism, which she later declared should be the true destiny of the Christian church. However, ecumenism as she defined it was of the spirit, and not in the outward forms of service or governmental structures of the various Christian denominations. It should be demonstrated by love and co-operation between Christians regardless of whether any institutional unions ever took place. In practical terms, ecumenism meant that neither she nor the Wrights nor the MacDonnells, nor any other of her non-Catholic friends, ever sought each others’ conversion. Rather, they supported each other in the carrying out of their own denomination’s religious obligations as expressions of a mutual faith. These ideas took shape and became part of her own religious philosophy during that spring, in the quiet and peace of the MacDonnell home. But they were rooted in the Alliston community in which she was raised, particularly as exemplified by her parents and her childhood friends.

At the end of June, Catherine moved into the new family home in Alliston. The difficult events of the past year had taken their toll on her. Nursing her dying mother while keeping the farm going, moving the family to Alliston and then leaving immediately for a strenuous teaching position in Galt, and worry about her family’s future and the heavy financial responsibilities which had now fallen on her twenty-one-year-old shoulders had by July caused her to break down “with almost fatal results.”¹⁰ “I was worn out mentally and physically for a few months quite convinced that I could never be capable of teaching school. It was almost a complete and incurable breakdown.”¹¹ Catherine never disclosed any of the medical details on how she managed to overcome her illness. She only stated that “God provided and I went through the experience of using my faith and the opportunities God had provided and still provides if we humbly ask Him.”¹²

By January 1907 Catherine had recovered sufficiently to take a teaching position at the Apto School, a hamlet north of Barrie, not far from Alliston. On 5 January she enrolled Tess in a boarding school in Toronto, the prestigious St. Joseph’s Academy for Young Women, founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph. Catherine paid the fees, although her father was listed in the academy register as guardian.¹³ Not quite seventeen years old, Tess was like her elder sister in temperament, strong-minded and energetic. Catherine described her at this time as “very clever and lively and attractive.”¹⁴

Catherine took young Mamie with her to Apto and arranged to have her enrolled in the school where she was now teaching. Lodging was found with the Loftus family “who kindly took us both to board at their fine home.” There was an elementary school in Allison which Mamie could have attended, but Catherine apparently wished to oversee Mamie’s studies for her Grade 8 elementary school certificate. Mamie had no objections to this arrangement, as she was a quiet, dutiful child whom Catherine always described as gentle, serious and co-operative, but who “perhaps gave in to worry too much at times.”¹⁵

The adolescent Tess was harder for her to handle, and Catherine admitted that it was often gentle Mamie who helped advise her. Tess became the centre of the next family crisis when, according to the St. Joseph’s Academy records, after only two weeks in the school, she left. The register stated that she “Took French leave, Saturday Jan. 19, 1907.” She never returned to the school; the next entry in her school record noted that Catherine Donnelly was sent a refund of $61.25 out of a total of $65.50 which she had paid for board and tuition for “Teresa Donnelly” for the term ending June 1907.¹⁶ These sums were a substantial portion of Catherine’s income, since her salary at Apto School was probably less than $500.¹⁷

Why did Tess leave and how did she manage to do it? Her son narrated her story many years later, beginning with Tess’s impression that

she was in the pipeline to becoming a nun in a Toronto Convent school, something that she did not want to do. One day the Convent school-children were on a field trip on a Toronto trolley, and got off. My mother stayed on until the trolley got to the Toronto train station, where my mother took a train to New York, enrolled in the Mount Sinai nurses school, became a registered nurse and rose to become chief scrub nurse in the Mt. Sinai operating rooms. Probably in 1916, she volunteered to go to France as a Red Cross nurse, and spent no more than a year in hospitals in Nantes and Brest, where she met my father.

Why my mother came to New York is a matter of speculation. I suspect that she thought she would have to distance herself from Aunt Catherine, who I know to be an exceedingly strong-willed person, in order not to be convinced to re-enter the convent school and then the convent. My mother’s relationship with Aunt Catherine was one of great affection and caring.¹⁸

This is a near tragic example of the misunderstanding between the two sisters and Tess and her teachers at school. Catherine at that time was, by her own admission, not particularly interested in or particularly approving of convent life, either for herself, or anyone in her family. Her main intent was to see that her sisters were educated to support themselves in a profession. Nor was it likely that the Sisters of St. Joseph tried to influence their graduates unduly to enter the order. Protestant and Catholic girls attended the school, for it was one of the best in Toronto. Only 2 per cent of the Catholic girls who were boarders at the school in this period entered the order.¹⁹ Fortunately the situation worked itself out. Catherine remained on good terms with her sister and was always very proud whenever she mentioned Tess’s career in nursing. But she omitted any reference to the event, and never explained how a good Catholic girl from Alliston ended up in a Jewish hospital in faraway New York City.

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 a salary of $650. She was thus able to pay Mamie’s tuition to the Normal School and her board for another year at St. Joseph’s. The Academy, moreover, had an arrangement with the Normal School that their graduates could be registered as boarders at St. Joseph’s and attend classes at the Normal School.

Mamie wrote three religious poems which were published in 1913 in St. Joseph’s Lilies, the St. Joseph’s alumnae magazine which had been started by Gertrude Lawler. The poems indicated a religious sensitivity and fervour which was exceptional for a young woman of nineteen. She had wanted to join the St. Joseph’s Order the previous year when she had finished high school, but Catherine insisted that she was to attend Normal School and teach for two years before making her final decision to become a nun.³²

Catherine meanwhile taught at Manley from August 1912 to December 1913. Her sister had just started teaching at S.S. No. 2 Nottawasaga, near Creemore, and was then offered the opportunity to teach at St. Peter’s Separate School in Toronto, starting January 1914. But to do so she had to find a replacement teacher at Nottawasaga, so Catherine resigned from Manley at Christmas in order to complete the teaching year for her. The salary was the same, and she would be nearer home and able to keep an eye on her father, who was feeling lonely with all his daughters away. But by September 1914 she was off to northern Ontario, to Hudson Consolidated School, near New Liskeard. Her only comment about that post, which paid her a salary of $600, was that the pupils came in a horse-drawn van. To attend Mass in Cobalt, Catherine walked eight miles (and in Northern Ontario winters too) to New Liskeard, and took a train to Cobalt. Later, the secretary provided a horse and buggy to New Liskeard.

From August to December 1915 Catherine held forth in the separate school in Merriton, near St. Catharines. Her salary was only $550, which was considerably below her former levels, but by January the following year, she was back in her own home district as principal of Caledon East Village School. Yet this brief posting to St. Catharines became one which she later felt was providential for her future career, for here she met Adeline McConnell, who took the junior grades in the school. They became close friends.

That summer Catherine made a great professional breakthrough, when she was offered the principalship of the public school in Penetanguishene at a salary of $850. It was a fine brick school of nine rooms with three hundred and sixty students. Adeline McConnell was hired too, and Catherine was also able to add to her staff three other friends who were good, experienced teachers: Marion Tyrell, and Helen and Mary O’Connor. She shared many interests with Mary, including a sense of adventure. The school was controlled by a Roman Catholic board because the great majority of the town’s students and the ratepayers were of that faith. Penetanguishene was one of the few instances in Ontario at that time where the “separate school” was that attended by non-Catholic children.

The town was attractively situated on hills which bordered Georgian Bay, and had been largely settled by French and Irish Catholic immigrants. It was famous for having played a historic role as a naval station, provisioning and repairing the British ships which fought in the War of 1812. On a hill overlooking Georgian Bay was one of the town’s finest buildings, St. Anne’s Catholic Church. It had been built in 1902 as a memorial to the Jesuit Canadian martyrs, in Italian Romanesque style, of Credit Valley limestone and Nottawasaga sandstone. In contrast to the more modest brick or wood Catholic churches of Adjala township, it was indeed splendid, with its very large interior walls faced with pastel marble and made brilliant by striking frescoes and large stained-glass windows. In 1911 the town population was only 1,134 people, but in the next ten years it had nearly quadrupled to 4,037. The Dominion census also recorded that the Catholic population was 2,466, and the rest of the townsfolk were divided among many small Protestant groups.

Catherine was very happy teaching the highest grade here, as well as being school principal. She had a reliable staff, and by 1918 her salary had been raised to $925, which was well above the average of $580 paid to female teachers in rural Ontario at that time. However, the school was not without its problems, for it had a high truancy rate. The social unrest caused by the First World War had produced profound distresses which struck deep into Canadian society, even in the smaller more cohesive communities, and many families became what would now be termed dysfunctional. Years later Catherine mused that “it was a social worker, well-trained, whom we needed instead of a truant officer whom the boys defied. I ought to have made time to visit the families myself. The Pastor, Father Brunet came to the school now and then. His load was very heavy, so was mine.”³³

Life for the teaching staff at the school changed very suddenly when the school board investigated the possibility of bringing in a religious teaching order to take over the school. Unknown to Catherine, plans were being made in the early spring to replace the lay teachers with Sisters of the Community of St. Joseph, Toronto.

On May 20th [1918], His Grace the Archbishop [Neil McNeil] called to make the request that four Sisters take charge of the Penetanguishene Public (Catholic) School in the coming September. Reverend Mother’s consent to the opening of the Mission was obtained by wire from B.C. Reverend Mother raised one objection, — the School was a public School. His Grace stated that it was an objection to have the School a Public School, but that at the present such an objection had to be borne with. The Council decided on the following conditions being agreed to by the authorities in the Mission before the Community take charge of the School.

1. Each Sister to receive $500.00 per annum.

2. The Community to be provided with a furnished home free of charge.

3. That the house be put in a state of good repair, the heating made satisfactory, and two additional rooms built at the rear to do service as Kitchen and laundry. The house is to be only an arrangement for a year or so until a suitable residence can be built.³⁴

It is not surprising that the local board agreed to the terms imposed by the Sisters of St. Joseph, as they were well known for their teaching vocation. Like other religious orders, they had worked in Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Toronto for many years, and always received salaries well below the average paid by Catholic school boards for their qualified lay female teachers. In many places in Ontario their salaries were half those paid in the public system. The new principal was to receive only $500 per annum, the same as her staff. Moreover, their single status was a certain guarantee of staff stability, for lay female teachers were expected to stop teaching when they married.

On hearing this news about the impending arrival of the St. Joseph Sisters, Catherine and her four colleagues resigned. Her work in Penetanguishene was acknowledged with a cursory note from L.F. LeMay, the board secretary: “Your letter of resignation as Principal of our school was read at the regular meeting of the School Board held last evening and accepted with regret. The School Board instructed me to convey their thanks to you for the excellent manner you have conducted the school during your stay here and wishing you every success for the future.”³⁵

Catherine immediately thought of applying to a public school board; but her school inspector, Joseph Garvin, told her that she was not likely to get as good a school position anywhere in Ontario. This was disheartening news from a man who had certified that “I consider Miss Catherine Donnelly is one of the best teachers in North Simcoe.”³⁶ But it was not a propitious time for a Catholic lay teacher to be seeking employment with a public school board. Protestant-Roman Catholic tensions had increased in Ontario during the war. Quarrels had erupted in the Toronto press over whether Catholics (particularly Irish immigrants) were contributing their fair share to the war effort by answering the call to arms. In spite of a proportionate enlistment in the armed forces by Catholic men, Catholic loyalty to the Allied cause was suspect in some circles.³⁷ It was an opportune time for suppressed anti-Catholic prejudice to surface, and it was manifested in unreasonable public utterances and actions. Public school board hiring committees were not immune to these pressures, and were beginning to be cautious about hiring a Roman Catholic. Catherine decided to investigate opportunities elsewhere.