Читать книгу To Do and to Endure - Jeanne R. Beck - Страница 13

CHAPTER 3

ADVENTURES IN ALBERTA: AM I CALLED TO BE A RELIGIOUS?

Catherine said there were several reasons why she decided “to try my luck in a western province,” but the only one to which she usually referred was the greater possibi ity of getting the better position and salary that her ability and experience merited. “I realized that openings for Catholic teachers which would suit me were scarce in Ontario.”¹ She was quite right. Teachers were in such short supply in the Canadian West, particularly in the rural areas of the prairie provinces, that her religion was less likely to be an impediment. After her recent experiences teaching in Catholic schools in Ontario, she felt more secure working for the public boards. She also believed that it was beneficial for children of all faiths to be educated together. A good salary was still of prime importance, for in September 1918 Catherine was still the only person in the family who could give financial support to her seventy-three-year-old father, who was living alone in Alliston. Her sister Tess had joined the American Medical Corps and was nursing wounded troops in France, while Mamie was now Sister Justina CSJ. On 5 July 1917, at the age of twenty-three, Mamie had entered the Community of St. Joseph in Toronto. On 5 January 1918, having completed her term as a postulant, she had begun her two-year novitiate.²

Working in western Canada also offered Catherine the prospect of new sights, new people and new adventures. She looked forward to seeing a part of the country not visited very frequently by easterners. She sent out some job applications, and while awaiting replies, received the good news from Inspector Garvin that “as she had taught successfully for two years as principal of a 9-roomed school in Penetanguishene, Ont,” he was recommending that “her certificate (II Class) be endorsed for Urban and Rural Schools of 4 or more rooms.”³ She decided to use the holidays to upgrade her academic qualifications and enrolled in summer school at Toronto. Her friend Mary O’Connor, who had also resigned from the staff of the Penetanguishene school when she had realized she too would be displaced by the St. Joseph Sisters, joined her there. One day she announced suddenly, “Chief, I’m going with you, and if possible, I’m going to teach in the same school with you.”⁴ Catherine was delighted. The only one who did not feel any joy about her plan to move was her father. He pleaded with her not to go so far away, but she said she still needed as high a salary as she could possibly earn, as she had to look after him.

Preparations were made to leave in late August 1918, and the two women travelled west together. They went by boat to Fort William, and in Winnipeg they arranged at a school employment bureau for a school at Kerrobert, Saskatchewan, for Mary O’Connor’s sister, Helen. She, too, had decided to join them in the western adventure, and arrived shortly to take up her duties at the Saskatchewan school. Catherine had also found positions for Mary and herself in Stettler, Alberta, a small town in the ranching country about 120 miles northeast of Calgary. But they thought they might prefer southern Alberta, so Catherine went to investigate the possibilities south of Lethbridge while Mary proceeded to Stettler to inspect the territory. As the Lethbridge lead proved false, Catherine caught the train to Stettler. There Mary and the school inspector, Mr. Thibodeau, greeted her at the station with the welcome news that everything was now arranged. Two vacancies were available in two rural one-room public schools, about five miles apart. Catherine would teach in one of them and board at the Claey ranch; Mary would teach in the second school, board at a ranch near her school, and join Catherine on the weekends.

They were soon introduced to western ranch life, as they were hospitably received by new friends who took them around the beautiful countryside and also arranged for them to go to church. They heard that although some Catholics were settled in the area, there was no Catholic parish church in the district. Their friends introduced them to a French Catholic family who lived in the area on the Genore Ranch and had built their own tiny private chapel in their house. When a priest was available, which might be about once a month, Mass was celebrated there for their family. They were told that they were welcome to attend. Catherine solved her transportation problem by breaking in a young horse which belonged to her landlady, Mrs. Charles Claey. She could now ride to visit her friends and also go to nearby Erskine, five miles away, for the mail. Classes at their schools commenced in September 1918.

The First World War ended in November, and brought the first contingents of soldiers home to families and friends. A delirium of joy swept through the nation, as Canadians anticipated happy reunions. But an epidemic of influenza had started in Europe in early 1918, and soon spread rapidly. It was brought into Canada by soldiers who had small resistance to the disease, for they had been weakened by constant fatigue, poor food, and years of living in the cold, damp trenches of the Western Front. The two women had only been teaching in Alberta for about six weeks when the dreaded Spanish flu struck their district with sudden and widespread virulence. It was a particularly dangerous strain of the disease, as it struck down young and healthy parents as well as their vulnerable babies and the elderly.

The Alberta government acted swiftly; by mid-November the schools were ordered to close indefinitely, and the teachers were requested to volunteer their services as nurses for the desperately ill families. Living in isolated farmhouses, often miles apart from their neighbours and far from the town, the poor homesteaders had no means of getting medical aid. In many cases, the whole family was struck down with the disease which could kill within a few days of contagion. In the Stettler area, the young couple whose private chapel Mary and Catherine had occasionally attended both died after only four days’ illness. The two women themselves felt they had to answer the call for volunteers, and prepared to undertake home nursing duties. They had taken a St. John Ambulance course in Penetanguishene, but neither of them had ever worked under such life-threatening conditions.

They were immediately assigned to their first case out in the country by the local doctor who, with the help of his wife, was struggling to organize help for his patients. In a farm home a father, mother, their baby and a baby cousin (who had been taken from his home when his sick parents became unable to care for him), were all dangerously ill. There were no drugs and many patients were dying from secondary pneumonia infections. The only curative measures the doctor could suggest were rest, nourishing fluids like chicken soup, and the traditional home-made mustard or onion plasters (the latter were to be used on the babies) to relieve chest congestion. There was no suitable food in the house, so Catherine went out to their hen-house, killed two of the chickens and prepared chicken soup for them all. Throughout the night Catherine nursed and fed the parents while Mary cared for the little ones. By morning Mary had also caught the flu, and Catherine now had five patients. When the doctor came by, it was obvious she needed help. He arranged to get all of them driven into Erskine, where he had commandeered the local Protestant church and turned it into a makeshift hospital. The beds were all occupied. After much difficulty, Catherine managed to scrounge another bed for her friend. For the next week she herself used a bench or a mat on the floor when she could take a break from nursing her five patients. Miraculously, Catherine escaped infection although she was ready to collapse from fatigue when finally more nursing help arrived. Catherine and Mary were then able to return to Claey’s ranch.

She soon took on another flu case: a farmer whose wife had recently died, and whose housekeeper had left him and his two children alone and sick. Mary O’Connor came too, although she was still too weak to do anything strenuous. It was fortunate that Catherine was a farmer’s daughter, for in addition to her nursing duties, she had to look after their valuable farm animals.

We slaved inside the house and out. The cattle had to be watered. We ran the pumping apparatus … We got the patients on their feet again. The boy and girl raced to the telephone to listen to the neighbours’ conversation. Then we knew they were O.K. We knew too, that materialism was the god of the home. The man had set his heart on securing a good wife — Miss O’C. We left as soon as we could possibly get away.⁵

By Christmas they were back home in Catherine’s quarters where they discussed the harrowing experiences of the last seven weeks. The most disturbing aspect of their nursing experiences, they agreed, was the absence of any recognition by their patients that they might also need some spiritual help when they were all facing possible death. Nor was there ever any expression of gratitude to God for their survival for, “There was no sign of faith in God, or resort to prayer in the homes where we nursed; rather the atmosphere everywhere breathed materialism.”⁶

They liked the people in the district, and Catherine knew that they were trusted and accepted. Working through the crisis, however, had made them 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 be made parochial — directly under his commands.”¹⁸ In addition she herself had a “very weak grade eight class, promoted haphazardly and belonging to proud parents who must have their children pass.” The physical plant was so bad and “the school furnace so inefficient that we couldn’t settle to work till March.”¹⁹ Catherine supported the teachers; but as she was the principal of the school and legally responsible directly to her superintendent, she was at a loss to devise ways to change their working conditions without authorization.

While struggling with these distracting matters she met Father William Cameron, the founder and principal of St. Mary’s Boys College and also a diocesan priest on the staff of the cathedral in Calgary. He was a discerning, kindly man whose academic ability and personal qualities had earned him a Rhodes scholarship. He was also highly regarded in Calgary for his support and leadership in Catholic charitable endeavours, particularly Holy Cross Hospital. Catherine found him to be an attentive and sympathetic listener, an experienced administrator and a brilliant teacher, whom she could consult with confidence about the troubles at Sacred Heart School. Her reminiscences about the situation in Calgary did not give many more details, except to state that Father Cameron gave her sage and helpful advice, and that in his professional discussions with her, he always treated her as an equal and a colleague. His reassurance about the rightness of her stand gave her the courage to insist, against the superintendent’s wishes, that she would present the school’s problems to the school trustees at a board meeting. The result was that “for me it was a complete triumph which boosted my desire to dare and fight for the right under all opposing forces.”²⁰ Improvements were made and “the school settled down to business.” She was particularly proud of the fact that “all my grade 8 pupils passed the dep’l exam and two of the prizes of the 3 always secured by St. Mary’s pupils taught by FCJ Sisters came to my pupils.”²¹

In the months following the school board incident, Catherine abandoned her idea of consulting the bishop about her concerns regarding her personal future: she found him haughty, uninterested and aloof.²² She turned instead to Father Cameron for advice “my wisest and best friend there.”²³ She confided to him her deep distress over the Church’s indifference to the spiritual and educational needs of the people in the rural areas in the West. She was certain that this would result in irreparable harm to these abandoned souls, and also damage the Church’s reputation and the welfare of the nation. She had developed such a longing to be a part of the solution to this situation, that she was perplexed as to whether this restless dissatisfaction with her present life was really a call from God to devote her future life to His work in a rural apostolate. Did this mean that she had a vocation to become a teaching sister in this unserviced territory? Or on the other hand, was it her duty to give priority to her financial and moral obligations to her father? Could these conflicting obligations be worked out so that she could seriously consider making the necessary preparations to enter a religious community? During the many hours they spent discussing her mission to bring education and the Catholic faith to rural western Canada, her longing to serve never wavered. Her passionate eagerness to undertake what they both knew would be a difficult and arduous task convinced Father Cameron that she did indeed have a vocation. Their discussions then turned to an investigation of the steps she should take before applying to a religious order. But which order?

They both agreed that it should be a teaching order, but Father Cameron felt that none of the religious communities working in the West at that time would be suitable for her envisioned apostolate, as most of them were French in origin with motherhouses overseas. However, he had heard that Bishop McNally had invited the St. Joseph Sisters in Peterborough to come to teach in Calgary next year. He suggested she contact them as they were the community most likely to be willing to consider her plan. Catherine was not enthusiastic about the Community of St. Joseph. She thought their religious habit was severe, cumbersome and so elaborately fashioned as to be quite unsuited to the rural conditions she had recently encountered. However, she agreed that when the time was opportune, she would discuss her ideas with them.

As the school year was now over, she joined Mary O’Connor at a cottage for a six-day holiday before the two of them went to Edmonton to summer school. She was informed that in September she was to be transferred to the principalship of another Catholic school in Calgary; the Sisters of St. Joseph would be taking over Sacred Heart School in September. Father Cameron’s information had been correct. Catherine was not keen at the prospect of working again for the Separate School Board in Calgary. She was torn between her duty to return east so as to be near her father, and her desire to experience more of Alberta by continuing to teach in rural schools. She decided to accept a teaching position in the town of Coleman about 175 miles southwest of Calgary, in the Crow’s Nest Pass area, and arranged for Mary O’Connor to take over her new Calgary posting in September. Neither of them was ready yet to make an application to a specific religious order, but they admitted to each other that they had made a private, spiritual commitment to enter religious life when the time was right. Catherine justified her decision to stay in the West for the time being because “I knew that I still needed plenty of salary for my expenses of different kinds. And I had matters to settle, problems to solve.”²⁴

Her father was one of the problems. Was Wellington Mackenzie another? There is no answer to that question, for Catherine never again made any direct reference to him or to any commitment to him. Mr. Mackenzie had written to Archbishop McNeil while she was at Stettler stating that, “At present I’m calling at the Monastery at 141 McCaul St. where I take instructions from Rev. Father Coughlan, once a week.” In May of that year he had written again “hoping that the time will not be long now before I shall have the pleasure of being received by you into the first and only true Church.” His last letter was written on 22 January 1919, in which was enclosed “a little gift to you as a token of my gratitude” for the “kind and sympathetic letter which you sent to me while at my home at Hillview, Ont, with reference to the death of my Father.”²⁵

In the meantime, Catherine had been writing to another old friend from her Penetanguishene staff, Adeline McConnell, urging her to join them in their western adventure. Adeline was intrigued and replied that only family duties were keeping her from accepting the enticing invitation. In late summer of 1919 she wrote saying she could come if she could get a position on staff at Coleman School. This Catherine managed to secure, and Adeline joined her in her cosy apartment in the town. Mary O’Connor came from Calgary one weekend for a joyous reunion celebration.

A week later, on a Saturday morning in early November, a telegram announcing that her father was seriously ill summoned Catherine back to Alliston. She asked the chairman of the school board to secure a substitute, and if possible, a permanent teacher, as she felt it would be impossible to give the board a definite date when she would be free to return. She caught the train that night and she arrived home three days later to find that her father was unconscious. A local practical nurse was doing her best to cope, and her aunt and cousin were also there. Sister Justina had arrived a few days earlier, having been granted special permission to leave her community for a few days. Now that Catherine had arrived, Mamie had to return to Toronto at once, as she was completing her novitiate and was preparing for her first profession on 5 January. Their sister Tess was not free to come home either, for she had been married in August, and was now living in the western United States.

As she had done so many times before, Catherine took charge in the family emergency. She hired two nurses from Toronto, and when her father had recovered sufficiently to travel, she took him to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, to see if he could undergo a cataract operation. It was deemed to be too risky due to his heart condition. She managed to secure work as a supply teacher in Toronto, for her father’s medical expenses and the wages of the home help had depleted her savings. As Sister Justina was teaching and living at the House of Providence in Toronto, Catherine persuaded her father to go there for a while to recover further. But he became very homesick and begged to return to Alliston. On 18 December when the fall school term was completed, Catherine brought him back home. “Worry and weariness and a feeling of insecurity brought on another delirious attack that evening. Sister Justina came as quickly as she could. He died on 23 December and was buried two days after Christmas. Sister Justina left that day for Toronto and I was alone.”²⁶ Only one line in the Alliston Herald reported “the death of Hugh Donnelly, aged 73 years.” Dr. Harper listed the cause of death as “apoplexy.”²⁷ In the following years Catherine regretted that she had left her father when he was so lonely, and felt guilty because his sadness had contributed to his illness. Her remorse was a gnawing grief that she carried for many years. She accepted without resentment the fact that the circumstances of her sisters’ lives had exempted them from physical and financial responsibility for their father. She believed that the task had been hers alone, and in times of discouragement and depression her self-reproach would resurface and become a heavy burden.

Early in the new year she sold the Alliston house, paid up the debts and disposed of the family’s belongings.²⁸ Now free to follow Father Cameron’s advice, she went to Peterborough to discuss her vocation with the Mother General of the St. Joseph’s Community. It was not a rewarding encounter for either of them. The Mother General was cool and reacted negatively to Catherine’s resolve to teach in the remote areas of western Canada as a sister of St. Joseph. As Catherine admitted later, hers was not an acceptable way to request entry into a religious order. Prospective nuns were not supposed to announce the kind of work they would do, and where they would do it. Such an attitude was defined in the holy rules of all of the religious orders as a grave offence against the vow of obedience. Catherine had never read the Holy Rule of the Community of St. Joseph, which warned that the sisters must “be on their guard against the spirit of independence; they shall set aside all considerations of personal qualities and advantages which they possessed in the world, and shall make no pretention to privileges on account of education or talent.”²⁹

The Mother General concluded the interview with the firm declaration that “they were expecting to go to Calgary, but they might not remain there … She did not think I should be accepted into their Community.”³⁰ Before she left Peterborough that day, she spoke with Bishop O’Brien, but he did not offer any direction or encouragement. The Peterborough incident, she once ruefully recalled, “deflated me considerably … tired and discouraged, I was in tears the whole way back to Toronto.”³¹ But she recovered enough to make the decision to seek an interview immediately with Father Arthur Coughlan, a Redemptorist priest who was the Canadian Provincial of his order and lived at their residence on McCaul Street, next to St. Patrick’s Church. She sought him out because a few years before, Sister Justina had spoken so highly of him that Catherine had “once talked with [him] about some matters and remembered that he was a very understanding man. I had some confidence in him.”³²

Father Coughlan was an American who belonged to a missionary order, founded in 1732 by St. Alphonsus Liguori of Naples, whose members had become particularly dedicated to an apostolate of conducting missions in Catholic parishes. Because of a great shortage of clergy, Bishop Michael Power had invited the order to come to Toronto in 1845, and they had soon become famous for their dramatic, effective preaching. Their homilies were carefully constructed to give instruction in doctrine, and at the same time to renew the faith of all who attended their services, particularly those who were lax or lapsed Catholics.

Father Coughlan was now fifty-one years of age, and had been educated by the Redemptorists since he was eleven. He had entered the seminary when he was nineteen, was ordained in 1892 at twenty-four, and in the early part of his career he had taught English at a Catholic College in Pennsylvania, and worked in parishes in New York and Baltimore. In 1913 Archbishop McNeil had requested the Englishspeaking Canadian Redemptorists (whose headquarters were in Baltimore) to provide a priest to work among the Italian immigrants in Toronto. Father Coughlan, who spoke Italian, was assigned to the task and performed it brilliantly. In 1915 he was made rector of St. Patrick’s Church and secretary councillor of the order’s vice-provincial. He soon became well known for his kindly and practical advice on spiritual matters and was a popular retreat master and confessor for several religious orders. His duties were expanded when the order made Canada and Newfoundland a separate English-speaking Redemptorist Province. Soon after, he took over most of the administration when his Superior became ill. In 1920 he was officially appointed Provincial of his large Canadian Province.³³

As his order was already working in western Canada, Father Coughlan understood Catherine’s concern, and was impressed not only by her compassionate presentation of the plight of rural immigrant families, but also by her revolutionary solution to provide them with teachers and religious instruction. Like Father Cameron, he too believed she had a vocation, for the spiritual and physical dedication which such a task required could only be sustained through a vowed commitment. The key to her plan of attack was to become a teaching sister working in rural schools in the western settlements outside the orbit of existing urban Catholic schools and churches. In this way she could provide urgently needed school instruction for students of all religious persuasions during the day with her salary paid by the public school board, and on Saturdays and during the summer give classes in religion to the children of Catholic families who had hitherto never been taught the faith. She was insistent that it was folly to wait for the establishment of a separate school system because the western Catholic population was so scattered among the small prairie settlements, there would be too many instances where a separate school, funded by the provincial department of education, would not be viable.

Father Coughlan advised Catherine that the only way for her to begin this apostolate in the public schools was to join an established order and persuade them that this was a promising field for both secular and religious education. He too was unable to suggest any women’s religious order, other than the St. Joseph’s Community, which might give serious consideration to her plan. He urged her to present her ideas to Mother General Alberta CSJ, in Toronto, because he believed that she was planning to open a Novitiate in Vancouver. If Catherine could enter the order there, she should be more sure of working in the West. Catherine indicated that this was not an order she felt would suit her. Undoubtedly the refusal from Peterborough still rankled, and she had already experienced their strictness and rigidity in applying their Holy Rule during her recent family emergency. Nevertheless, she agreed to apply, especially since Father Coughlan could not think of any alternative.

She was gratified when Mother Alberta received her kindly; Catherine described her as “capable and friendly.”³⁴ Mother Alberta accepted her as a prospective applicant; however, she added that she was nearing the end of her term of office and did not know what the attitude of the new Mother General would be. As the next group of postulants would not be received until July 1920, and it was now only January, she advised Catherine to make a formal application, return to the West, teach for the rest of the school year, and make plans to enter the novitiate with the next group of postulants. Catherine agreed, for she had to earn money to pay for her living expenses until June, and also for the dowry and trousseau which were required when she entered as a postulant.

Catherine returned west in February to an excited reunion with Adeline and Mary. She refused an offer to rejoin the staff in Coleman, and took a higher-paying position as the principal of a two-room school in Morrin, seventy-five miles north and east of Calgary. All went well, and as she had to leave for Toronto before the end of June, Father Cameron found a high-school student willing to take on her duties until the school year ended.

On 2 July 1920 Catherine and four other young women were received as postulants of the Community of St. Joseph, Toronto, at their novitiate at Scarborough-on-the-Lake. The donning of the postulant’s simple black dress affirmed the sudden and severe transition which Catherine was about to undertake. At thirty-six, she was older by at least fifteen years than most of her classmates. For seventeen years she had been an independent career woman who had supported herself and her family. She was a successful teacher who had advanced steadily, by making her own decisions on her career direction and her employers. On occasion she had acted aggressively and confronted her employers when she felt measures should be taken to remedy untenable situations in schools where she taught. When she had left Penetanguishene, very few women teachers in Ontario at that time were principals of such a large school or were earning her salary. By nature she was a plain-spoken person who had never hesitated to take the initiative in a situation if she felt comment or action was required. Did she fully appreciate the great transformation that she was expected to undergo?

The purpose of the postulancy was twofold. First, it was a period of probation for the candidates, during which their personalities and their beliefs would be scrutinized thoroughly by the Novice Mistress and the Mother General to ascertain the validity of their vocation — that is, their willingness to offer their lives completely and unreservedly to the service of God. Second, it was designed to determine whether the temperament and the spiritual qualities of the candidate would fit well with that of the community, and were suitable to the carrying out of its designated mission. For her part, the postulant during this period was expected to examine her motives for becoming a nun and to become confirmed in the certainty that this particular order would satisfy her desire to serve God. The regulations which governed the conduct of postulants were designed to introduce the candidate to the lifestyle of those vowed to follow the Way of the Evangelical Counsels, which were the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience that they would take after they had completed a further two years of training as novices. In the next six months therefore, both the candidate and the order had to find out if the novice was called to make this commitment, and whether she was suited to become a member of that particular order.

The commitment to become a nun demanded of the postulant, first of all, the surrender of her own will to the Holy Rule by which the order was governed, and to the direction of the Mother General and the Novice Mistress who were responsible for her training. In practical terms this meant that in every aspect of each day’s activities she should “faithfully and joyfully fulfil the orders of their Superior, seeing God alone in her person and His Will in her commands.”³⁵

Catherine found the atmosphere of the novitiate more austere and strict than she had expected. Postulants were admonished if they did not fulfil with careful attention the minutiae of the Holy Rule. She blamed the severity of the discipline on the new Mother General, Mother Victoria, who she felt was more punctilious than Mother Alberta. It was more likely the demands imposed by the ancient rules and customs of the order, rather than particular personalities, which determined the prevailing atmosphere of the novitiate. The reasons for the myriad of regulations and customs which governed every aspect of the postulants’ lives were not explained, nor were queries on their origin and purpose welcomed. As the Holy Rules of all religious orders stipulated that postulants and novices be kept strictly segregated from the professed sisters, Catherine had no opportunity to contact Sister Justina (who was now teaching in St. Catharines) for advice or comfort. The candidates were expected to accept their daily routines as given, without expressing any doubt or question as to their effectiveness. At that stage of their formation as nuns, they were being tested for their physical and spiritual endurance, their patience, and their willingness to accept criticism about minute details of their behaviour. These were all qualities which they would need to cultivate if they were going to survive in the conditions they would encounter from time to time as professed sisters. They would then be full members of a working community in which perfection of their lives was their goal, and abnegation of self in the performance of their assigned tasks was the means of achieving it.

During this time Catherine did become very fond of her Novice Mistress, Sister Avila, who came from Everett, just north of Alliston. She described her as “a brilliant, sweet character, very frail — my good friend for the rest of her life.”³⁶ She was, as their constitutions instructed, a person who possessed “great prudence and charity; she should be serious, yet affable, and firm without ceasing to be gentle.”³⁷

In all her descriptions of her experience as a postulant in the St. Joseph’s novitiate, Catherine admitted that she was, from the beginning, very open in expressing her own vocational expectations, which she announced would be “teaching in the public schools of the rural west,” and she “couldn’t be satisfied with any other destination.”³⁸ Mother General Victoria chastized her for having predetermined her future service, and stated emphatically that “You will go just where you are sent.”³⁹ This rebuke did not stop Catherine’s protests about the Church’s neglect of the rural West — also a serious breach of the Rule. She did adjust, however, to the daily routine; Sister Avila did not find her lacking in humility or diligence in the performance of her spiritual or work assignments, but it was clear to her superiors that she was bored and worried. She realized there were now no plans to open a Vancouver novitiate, and that the whole mind-set of the order was against the principle of allowing their sisters to be in direct contact with the public school system.

Two months before the postulancy was completed, the candidates were scheduled to be measured for their religious habits. They would put these on at the end of the colourful ceremony which marked the postulant’s official reception as a novice of the order. Each women’s religious order had it own distinctive style of habit, and great care was taken to make them all identical in every detail according to the regulations set out in their constitutions. The “holy habit” of the St. Joseph’s Order was of plain black material, with sleeves twelve inches wide which extended to the end of the hand; its softly pleated skirt was two yards wide and did “not quite touch the ground.” The head-dress consisted of six parts: a black veil which extended six inches below the elbow; an underveil of the same material; a white cornet (bonnet) which extended under the chin; a white band across the forehead; and a white guimpe (a very deep broad linen collar) “which shall cover the breast.”⁴⁰ The measuring procedure was usually a source of joyous expectancy for the postulants, for now they only awaited official approval of their acceptance as novices by the Mother General and the Council. Yet as the time approached, Catherine did not conceal her dislike of the garb; she thought that it was unsuitable for work in isolated districts where roads were often dusty tracks, and where the poor immigrants were barely eking out a living from the land.

Instead of being measured, Catherine was called before Mother Victoria and told that she would not be accepted into the order, and that she should prepare to leave immediately. No explanation was given for the decision which, as the Holy Rule stipulated, had been made by the Mother General after conferring with her councillors and the Mistress of Novices. Catherine was shocked. She had gone into the order with some misgivings, but never for a moment during the past four months had she doubted her vocation. She asked if the decision could be reconsidered but was told it was final. She then asked if she could delay leaving for a day or so until she could make plans, for now she had nowhere to go. Permission was granted, and she fled back to her room where she lay inert in bed, unable to plan her next move. “That night a dear little postulant (afterwards Sister St. Edwin)… came to my room, lay on the floor and wept hysterically — then left and I was alone to take my few belongings and move into the great unknown.”⁴¹ Many years later Catherine rationalized her rejection by stating that from the beginning she had been uncomfortable about entering the order, and not too hopeful of persuading them to alter their centuries-old traditions. “In the Novitiate I was never happy. There seemed to me, always, something inconsistent about my being there … Mother Victoria rejected me, Thank God.”⁴²

In another document, however, her real feelings at the moment of rejection were candidly revealed. “Never shall I forget the feeling of being utterly without sympathy or understanding from Catholics! I felt scorned, despised and terribly alone!”⁴³ Where and to whom could she turn now? If she were not acceptable to the Community of St. Joseph, which had been recommended by two priests who knew her well and whom she trusted, did that mean that she was deluding herself that she had a vocation to be a nun? It was in this mood that she phoned the one person to whom in her desolation she could feel close, her old friend Irene MacDonnell, with whom she had boarded when she was teaching in Galt in 1906, and with whom she had maintained a firm friendship ever since. The family had moved to 36 Park Road in Toronto. When Catherine phoned to say that she was leaving the convent, no questions were asked; she heard only the welcoming words, “Come right here.” Her leave-taking from the convent in November 1920 remained vividly etched in her mind.

There was a lane to the street and a regular street car would take me to Park Road — no one to come with me to the street car, no one to say Good-Bye — but at Park Road the most beautiful love and kindness awaiting. God surely provides! It strengthens my Faith yet, to think of it … On that street car moving towards that loving, intelligent, family of Baptist Christians I repeated over and over —

God around me, God above me,

God to guide me, God to love me.

Darling, beautifully-cultured, sweetly-Christian, Mother Irene MacDonnell was at the door. “Come and stay as long as you like.” Ruth, Achsah, and Mr. and Mrs. MacDonnell had a home saturated with heavenly love and refined culture — days there for me that I can never forget.⁴⁴

While Catherine was recovering from her shock and humiliation, she was comforted by a letter forwarded to her by Sister Justina. Sister Avila had gently informed Sister Justina immediately after Catherine had been rejected; for she knew that the quiet, gentle Mamie would be very upset at her sister’s failure and need consoling.

My dear Sister Justina,

The accompanying news will grieve you, I know. Yet there is much I might tell you to lessen your grief. Your dear sister has been an exemplary postulant, and has never given me a moment’s anxiety. In one accustomed to govern, I naturally expected to find much evidence of self-will. It will surely greatly comfort and edify you to know that I found none.

Your sister won the esteem and affection of her companions, and her going is a real grief to them. I am confident that the Divine Providence of God which orders and rules all things so sweetly has designed this experience for your dear sister as a preparation for some special work He has set aside for her capable direction. Pray hard that light may abound to lead her steps aright.

Miss D. is brave and cheerful. I feel she is realizing the truth of Father Faber’s words: “There is no disappointment to him whose will is buried in the will of God.” May that same precious conformity lighten your heart dear Child, and bring you comfort and consolation. God bless you.

Sister Justina’s note accompanying Sister Avila’s letter assured Catherine that “it is the Holy Will of God and while it is a disappointment there is consolation in the thought that ’every cross is a crown begun’ and ’absence of trials is not God’s usual way of rewarding faithful service.’” She invited Catherine to visit her late in December and assured her that “Sister Superior will welcome you most cordially.” She closed her note with “all the love of a fond sister’s heart to one who has been brave in the battle of life and who some day will hear the Master’s own ’well done’.”⁴⁵

Although these letters helped dull some of her pain, Catherine always credited the MacDonnell family for her recovery of faith in her own worth and in her vocation. With loving care in the form of good meals and gentle understanding, they halted her descent into a despair from which she might not have otherwise recovered. Just before Christmas she decided that the time had come to report her recent disaster to Father Coughlan. He listened calmly to her story, and his only comment was, “I guess you talked too much about the West.” Catherine had to admit that she had. There was silence, and then to her astonishment he burst into hearty laughter and said, “You had better start a community of your own.”⁴⁶ For Catherine, that moment on 20 December 1920 was the instant of the birth of the Sisters of Service; this priest, whom she esteemed and trusted, still believed that she had a vocation, had understood that her ideas were so revolutionary that no established religious order in the Canadian Catholic Church would be able to bring them to fruition. Their traditions were too entrenched to enable them to make the transition into a new era of Catholic education and apostolic mission.

Father Coughlan then said he needed time to get his regular duties completed, and as it was getting close to Christmas, they should wait until after the holiday before beginning their discussions about the new religious order. Catherine returned happily to report the amazing turn of events to Irene MacDonnell, who immediately invited her to stay with them as long as she needed. Now they would all be able to enjoy Christmas together. Catherine rejoiced that at last she had found the road leading to the mission she had envisioned. She felt vindicated, and confident in her ability to present her plans for the new order in a clear, logical and persuasive way when the time was ripe.