CCHA, Historical Studies, 61 (1995), 99-133
The Sisters of
Charity
of the Immaculate Conception:
A Canadian Case Study*
Elizabeth W.
McGAHAN
In 1994 the Sisters of Charity of the
Immaculate Conception [SCIC], once known as the Sisters of Charity of Saint
John, commemorated 140 years of service to Roman Catholic communities in
Canada, including a quarter century of mission work in Peru. Ironically,
thoughts of celebration seem inappropriate at a time when the Sisters of Charity
face a decrease in the community’s historical influence within the hospital
system of New Brunswick.
For the past few years the sisters have
engaged in a highly publicized battle with the provincial government. At the
peak of public intensity even the Globe and Mail, usually averse to
covering anything from New Brunswick except fish, lumber, mines and the COR
party’s views on bilingualism, reported details of the debate: the Province
plans to eliminate individual hospital boards. The administration of Catholic
hospitals believe the proposal for regional boards will diminish the influence
of Roman Catholic religious, effectively eliminating their lengthy control of
health services.2
In the 1850s when the city of Saint John
was reeling under the cholera epidemic even the non-Catholic public in this
most rabidly sectarian city praised the health care assistance being provided
to orphans by women religious3 That, however, was an era in
which a person’s religious affiliation revealed not only his or her church but
also provided an indication of occupational status, general level of education
and wealth, and frequently, the neighbourhood of residence.4
Today this stereotyping is no longer easily
done even in New Brunswick. Much has changed, particularly during the past
three decades. The increased fiscal presence of the government in the fields of
social service, health and education has strengthened the policy-making
dimension of the secular within sectors once heavily influenced by the
apostolic communities. This secularization of institutions, coupled with the
increasing numbers of Roman Catholics, and especially Roman Catholic women,
acquiring education and position in the secular world and thus, no longer
seeking careers within religion as a profession, resulted in the separation of
institutional religion from many of the routines of everyday life.
Consequently, Roman Catholic religious congregations no longer play the
dominant role in Catholic affiliated hospitals.
Moreover, for religious communities this
secularization occurred simultaneously with post-Vatican II structural changes
affecting their institutes. The Sisters of Charity have not been immune to such
upheavals. And so, in the wake of increased government presence and decreasing
religious personnel, the current hospital crisis faced by the Sisters of
Charity in its struggle with the province became a metaphor for the challenge
faced by the Sisters of Charity in their struggle for survival as a viable
women’s apostolic religious community.
Relative to our general knowledge about
other aspects of Canadian Roman Catholic church history5 comparatively
little is known about congregations of women religious in English-speaking
Canada.6 This paper
considers the foundation, expansion, and stabilization periods of the
community’s life cycle – encompassing the years 1854 to 1965.7
THE FIRST PERIOD...
1. Foundation and
Routinization: 1854-1897
The Sisters of Charity of Saint John was
founded in 1854 in response to the demographic impact of the Great Famine upon
the port city of Saint John. Observing that many of his newly arrived flock
were clustered at the lower end of the economic scale and pressed by the
surplus of orphans created by the cholera epidemics of the early 1850s, Bishop
Thomas Louis Connolly concluded that an apostolic women’s religious community
was critical to the physical and cultural survival of the diocese.8 Although he was an
Irishman who had volunteered for service in Canada Connolly chose not to invite
the services of either an Irish congregation or a French Canadian congregation.9 Instead, having
pastored in Halifax, he sought the assistance of those congregations with whom
he had worked while in the Nova Scotian capital. And thus, he contacted the
superiors of the Sisters of Charity and the Religious of the Sacred Heart, each
of which had their generalates or headquarters in New York City.
Inundated by the demands of a burgeoning
Catholic population in New York City, neither superior could provide personnel
assistance. When cholera struck Saint John again in the summer of 1854,
Connolly personalized his plea by reminding the Religious of the Sacred Heart
that while he had been in Halifax he had attended their spiritual and secular
needs and now with “seventy orphans on my hands” he needed their support.10 The Bishop was
obviously calling in his “markers.” From the Religious of the Sacred Heart,
Connolly secured four sisters to care temporarily for the everincreasing
orphans.
However, the Sisters of Charity, who were
facing a continuing crisis in New York with the arrival of poor Irish
immigrants, again reiterated their initial objections to further missions in
the Maritimes. But Mother Ely did grant Bishop Connolly permission to address
the novitiate in the hope of securing volunteers for Saint John. Those who
joined him accepted that they would be severing their ties to New York and
forming a diocesan-based community in Saint John. Additionally, the Bishop and
the New York Charities understood that there would be no further requests
coming from the Diocese of Saint John.11
Four volunteers responded to Connolly’s
appeal. Among them was Honoria Conway (1815-1892),12 later to be
recognized as foundress of the first indigenous English-speaking women’s
congregation in Canada – the Sisters of Charity of Saint John.13 By late 1854,
Bishop Connolly had in place the beginnings of a community pledged to the
foundation of the Sisters of Charity of Saint John, and intended to provide a
range of services addressing the linguistic, demographic and geographic
matrices of the community’s mission field.
On October 21,1854 the women who came with
Connolly to Saint John made their vows as Sisters of Charity of Saint John.
They also received the Rules of the community which, although written by Connolly,
were intended to reflect the spirit of those followed by the Sisters of Charity
of New York. As was the procedure during the early years of diocesan religious
congregations, the bishop appointed the superior. Connolly chose Honoria Conway
who at once began to serve as Mother General; a few years later she was also
named Mistress of Novices.14
The period of foundation (1854-1897) was characterized
by the attendant stresses associated with: (1) the founding of a new religious
community; (2) the selection of appropriate locales of service for the sisters;
and (3) the specific apostolates open to the Sisters of Charity.
Initially, the small community occupied a
temporary house on Cliff Street in Saint John, until the building of their
permanent complex on that street in 1865. This housed the resident Mother
General, the professed sisters, the novitiate (novices), the postulants, the
orphanage, an elementary school and, by 1892, a high school.15 With all of these
functions at the same site, a fairly rigid system of spatial allocation
developed to enable the sisters to observe the monastic dimension of their
lives.16 Quarters used by the sisters for eating, sleeping and recreating were
off limits to others. Nonetheless some aspects of the community’s rules
underwent temporary modifications as the sisters balanced the exercise of
their religious duties against the needs of an Irish immigrant population
recovering from an epidemic.17 And so, reflecting the needs of the diocese in
the late 1850s, Mother Conway waived the one-year isolation imposed on novices
and instead assigned them to assist with the care of the orphans.
The Cliff Street Motherhouse with its many
other functions was the busiest house in the community. Modelled somewhat on
the physical characteristics of what the founders recalled about the Sisters
of Charity Motherhouse in New York, it was easier, however, to pattern the
physical structure of the new community after the New York group than it was to
reestablish the social structure. Although the Saint John community’s Rule
closely followed that of New York, the temporary blending of the functions of
Mother General and Mistress of Novices, perhaps, reflected the scale of the new
community. In 1865 the community had about thirty-five members. Moreover,
although Mother Honoria Conway may have been suited by temperament and skill
for the dual task, she was a relatively young religious. In short, in its
beginning years the Saint John community did not have as role models a core
group of sisters who had passed through an established novitiate.18
Despite their inexperience as religious,
however, members of the new community shared an important variable with the
majority of the port city’s Catholic population: ethnicity. The City of Saint
John had the largest concentration of Irish Catholics in the province. In fact,
the community’s earliest house foundations within the city mirrored the
demographic distribution of the Irish,19 with St. Peter’s
convent in the North End (No. 2) and St. Joseph’s Convent on the West Side (No.
3.) becoming bases for the teaching sisters in those areas of the city. Honoria
Conway and her successors in the office until 1897 were responsible for
establishing the considerable teaching and social services facilities for the
Catholic population of the city.20
Within the province of New Brunswick during
Mother Conway’s term, the congregation expanded along the Saint John River,
first in 1857, to Sainte-Basile du Madawaska to establish a school for
Catholics in northwestern New Brunswick, and then to Fredericton the following
year to open St. Dunstan’s convent.21 Mother Conway’s
period in office ended in 1862. Perhaps the brevity of the founding sister’s
generalate was due not only to the strenuous demands of early establishment,
but also to an unpleasant and embarrassing incident involving the convent at
Sainte-Basile.22
In 1861 the sister stationed there with two
postulants decided without permission to journey across the province to Bishop
Rogers’ Diocese and apparently began to criticize publicly the Sisters of
Charity.23 Very little remains in the records of the incident but it underscored
the two principal difficulties of the new community: first, the inexperienced
novitiate and undeveloped authority structure within the community; and second,
the problem of trying to staff convents several hundred miles apart from the
Mother House in Saint John.24
That the community’s authority structure,
at least on the informal level, was still evolving may be seen through the three
generalates following Mother Conway in a span of twelve years: Mother Francis
Routanne, 18621865, Mother Mary Augustine O’Toole, 1865-1868 and Mother Mary
James O’Regan, 1868-1874.25 It is uncertain whether there was an informal
understanding with the then bishop, John Sweeny, concerning the rotation of the
chief executive office to give the founding sisters administrative experience.
It does appear, however, that the demands of the office were too much for
Mother O’Regan, who assumed the office at age thirty-three, stepped down and
eventually left the community.26
Mother O’Regan was succeeded by Mother
Augustine O’Toole, who in light of her earlier three-year term, now became the
first experienced woman to occupy the office of Mother General. Assuming office
in 1874, she was to remain superior of the Sisters of Charity until 1897. Oral
tradition within the community, recorded in the 1950s, characterized Mother
O’Toole “as a far-seeing and capable business woman.”27 Mary O’Toole had
emigrated from Carlow, Ireland to New York City where she entered the Sisters
of Charity. Ill-health had forced her to leave the novitiate. After recuperating,
she planned to reapply to the New York community but she discovered the new
congregation in Saint John. She and her sister Bridget journeyed by coastal
vessel to Saint John; and became-the community’s first postulants in 1855.28
During her twenty-three year generalate,
Mother O’Toole not only managed the existing operations inherited in 1874, but
presided over the founding of St. Patrick’s Industrial Home in 1880. By that
year, there was sufficient need within the Catholic community to operate such a
facility for homeless Catholic boys.29 Mother O’Toole was
also the guiding force behind the opening of the first nursing home in the city
of Saint John in 1888 – an undertaking which undoubtedly reflected the
tremendous late nineteenth-century out-migration of the young from the
Maritimes and the resultant desertion of the displaced elderly.30
Mother O’Toole's skills must have been
thoroughly tested by the ethnic duality of her adopted province and religious
community. The unfortunate incident in Sainte-Basile, it appears, influenced
the Diocese to close the convent there in 1873 and direct its attention instead
to the Acadians of southeastern New Brunswick. Consequently, in 1873, a convent
was established in Memramcook not far from Moncton, which was, through railway
connections, more accessible to Saint John than the Sainte-Basile foundation
had been. This convent was staffed mostly by French-speaking sisters. Thus,
when Mother O’Toole assumed office, the Sisters of Charity had in addition to
its English-speaking foundations in Saint John and Fredericton, one house
serving the Acadians.31
Beginning in the 1880s, there appeared to
be an attempt on the part of the diocese and the Sisters of Charity to
apportion the resources of the congregation along the linguistic and
demographic lines defined by the English-speaking Irish-Catholic, and
French-speaking Acadian, communities. For example, when an English-speaking
convent was opened in Moncton in 1886, two years later an Acadian convent was
founded in Shediac.32 The apostolates of the Sisters of Charity
emphasized education and social work. But politically, they also underscored
the ethnic diversity of the Roman Catholic community in the province of New
Brunswick.
That diversity was strongly reflected in
the ethnic divisions within the Sisters of Charity novitiate. In the years
1854-1897, approximately two-thirds (63.3%) of the entrants were Irish, that
is, either born in Ireland or born in Canada of Irish ancestry. One-third
(31.3%) were Acadian. Those classified as “Others” comprised sisters who were
neither Irish or Acadian and were relatively few (5.4%).33
Responding to the concerns of the French
clergy and laity about the loss of language and culture by Acadian women, a
French-speaking novitiate was established by the Sisters of Charity at
Buctouche in 1881.34 The experimentation with a dual novitiate
structure suggests the degree of concern within the community regarding the
recruitment of, and socialization of, young Acadian women. Once again, the
records are silent on the success or failure of this venture. However, we may
assume that in a small congregation two novitiates strained the community’s
resources and its sense of collective integrity. In short by 1890, the dual
novitiate had been tried and apparently rejected. Notably, during the
foundation period (1854-1897), all who served as Mother General with one exception
were Irish-born or of Irish descent. As well, those holding the position of
Mistress of Novices were also Irish, with the exception of Mother Mary Frances
Routanne, originally from England and a convert from Anglicanism, who served
as Novice Mistress for the French entrants during the brief period of the dual
novitiate system.35
Thus, at the time of Mother O’Toole's death
in 1897, the geographic outlines of the community’s expansion were in place:
service to the Irish and Acadian communities of New Brunswick. But it was also
apparent that the language of the then approximately ninety-five member
community was to be English in the Motherhouse, and French as the situations
demanded. As well, the customs and administration were, for the most part, to be
Irish. These ethnic tensions were eventually to affect the congregation’s
geographic profile.
THE SECOND
PERIOD...
2. Expansion and
Ethnic Solidification: 1897-1936
Mother O’Toole’s death temporarily and
briefly interrupted the Irish control of the generalate. She was succeeded by
Mother Philomene Sirois, the only Acadian to hold the office of Mother General.36 Mother Sirois,
born in the State of Maine, had entered from the New Brunswick border village
of Sainte-Basile du Madawaska in 1863. Obviously her administrative talents had
been recognized by Mother O’Toole. In 1888 when the sisters opened the Saint
John Mater Misericordiae Home for the Aged, Sister Philomene became superior of
the foundation. At the time of her ascendancy to the office of Mother General
she was nearing her ninth year as the home’s administrator. Nonetheless, during
Mother Sirois' six year (1897-1903) generalate no new foundations were opened.
This contrasted with virtually all previous generalates. The lack of house
foundation activity and the brief term of her office suggests that Mother
Sirois as an Acadian may have been perceived as only an interim appointee. Also
she may not have enjoyed the same degree of access to the Irish bishop of the
Diocese.
The contrasting brevity of Mother Sirois’
term reflects the overall diminished rate of success among Acadians in securing
administrative posts within the community. During the period 1854 to 1897, they
headed convents only in Acadian areas, appearing to have been de facto removed
from the “stream” leading to the senior posts within the Sisters of Charity.
Preceded by the twenty-three year generalate of Mother O’Toole and succeeded by
the fifteen-year generalate of Mother Thomas O’Brien, Mother Sirois’ six year
term underscores the lack of advancement and, perhaps, lack of influence which
may have characterized the career routes of Acadians who entered the Sisters of
Charity.37
Mother Sirois’ successor, Mother Thomas
O’Brien assumed office in 1903. A native of Carleton County, New Brunswick she
had taught as a religious for many years at St. Joseph’s School in West Saint
John. Moreover, she had administrative experience as Mistress of Novices.38 Under her
administration the congregation was to establish Its profile in hospital care
and more significantly, was to open its first foundations in western Canada.39
The circumstances surrounding the 1906
mission of the Sisters of Charity to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan underline the
growth of demographic, ethnic and regional patterns in the development of the
Canadian state at the turn of the century. The request for the services of the
Sisters of Charity occurred at a time when the population growth in eastern
Canada, especially the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and
Prince Edward Island, was stagnating.40 Since the
community was based in a province and region not experiencing demographic
growth, and thus not being pressured to meet severe personnel demands in New
Brunswick, it could afford to take up the call to “mission” in western Canada
without reducing its diocesan commitments.
Invited by the local Oblate pastor, Father
William Bruek, The sisters of Charity took over the operation of the orphanage
already in existence since 1899. The earliest orphans had French surnames, although
one youngster, reflecting eastern European immigration, was called Moise
Fidler. Before the Sisters of Charity arrived, the orphanage had been staffed
by a Frenchspeaking community, the Sisters of Providence. However, the
late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century immigration trends within Canada
produced an immense increase in the English-speaking population of
Saskatchewan. At the turn of the century those in charge of the Prince Albert
Orphanage responded to the plight of the Roman Catholic Child Emigration
Movement in Liverpool and contacted the Catholic English Rescue Society in
Great Britain, offering to take seventy children at the Prince Albert facility.
With
the advent of
greater numbers of English-speaking orphans, and non-French-speaking
immigrants, the pastor decided that an English-speaking congregation of
sisters was needed.41 Hence, the English-speaking Sisters of Charity
of Saint John now assumed responsibility for the orphans and the facility in
Prince Albert came to be known as St. Patrick’s Orphanage.
In Saskatchewan the Sisters of Charity
eventually opened a total of four houses, including a hospital in 1910, four
years before St. Joseph’s Hospital in Saint John.42 Saskatchewan
became the community’s gateway to western Canada as missions were opened in
Alberta and British Columbia. In many ways the challenges of the western
missions renewed the community’s missionary spirit which, more than fifty years
earlier, animated the founders who had cared for Irish orphans and missioned
within the timber colony of New Brunswick.
In short, the geographical migration of the
Sisters of Charity followed the demographic development of Canada, a trend
reflecting the waning presence of the Roman Catholic French-speaking laity in western
Canada with a simultaneously increasing demand for the services of an Englishspeaking
congregation.
Although New Brunswick was not experiencing
the population boom of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it
would seem that in the face of requests from some sectors of the Diocese of
Saint John for more parochial schools, the Sisters of Charity might have
engaged in greater expansion within their home province. But they did not. They
went west. Possibly one clue to the congregation’s western migration rests
within its community’s ethnic and demographic structure.
The decision by the Sisters of Charity to
accept the call in 1906 to establish missions in the West eventually led to an
increase in the congregation’s English-speaking membership. That trend
reflected the influence and support of an Irish English-speaking clergy and lay
community. Between 1905 and 1923 the Sisters of Charity grew from about 115
members to about 220, a number of whom came from the community’s high school in
Saint John.43 At the same time the establishment of the western missions had some
immediate and negative consequences within the bilingual congregation.
Notably, the attention of Mother O’Brien and the Council to the expansion of
the Sisters of Charity into western Canada in fact restricted the development
of activities in the French language in the Acadian areas of the home province
of New Brunswick.
In 1914, and again in 1915, the Acadian
sisters wrote to Mother O’Brien seeking permission to leave “in order to open a
novitiate among the French population.”44 Closing the
novitiate at Buctouche in 1890 had effectively removed the possibility of a
French novitiate within the Sisters of Charity. In their earlier letter the
French sisters had written Mother O’Brien claiming that “members of our Acadian
clergy... have reportedly told us that it is wellneigh impossible to [direct]
their girl-parishioners to enter our Community as it is now constituted.”45 Moreover, they
continued, the “chief objection, in former times, was to the almost exclusive
use of the English language at the Mother House and in most of the outside
Houses.”46
Perhaps, Mother O’Brien was not inclined to
listen to the complaints from Acadian clergy because during the years of her
generalate the entrance rate of Acadians had remained constant within the
community. Overall the Sisters of Charity were attracting new members at about
twice the rate of previous years.47
As well, despite the unhappiness of the
French-speaking sisters, Mother O'Brien’s focus was on the western missions,
the new hospital in Saint John, and, perhaps most importantly in terms of the
congregation’s status, the efforts to constitute the Sisters of Charity as a
Papal Institute in 1914.48
By the end of World War I, there was an
increase in the numbers of young women wishing to join the Sisters of Charity.
As a result, the position of Mistress of Novices assumed a more formalized role
with the records suggesting a routinization in the appointment procedures.49 To those observing
the community from outside, the Sisters of Charity had emerged as more than a
provincially-based congregation obliged to consult with the bishop about every
decision. Achieving the standing of a Papal Institute allowed the congregation
greater financial independence and the status of being able to have a direct
line of communication with Rome. As well, following the Decree of Praise,
obedience no longer remained with the bishop of Saint John. Within the
community, a key trend was the assumption by Irish-Canadians of greater control
of the leadership of the congregation as it moved into a broader Canadian
context.
In 1918 the generalate changed hands.
Mother O’Brien was succeeded by Mother Alphonsus Carney, the first Saint John
native to occupy the office. Born in 1861 just outside the city limits, she had
attended the schools operated by the Sisters of Charity.50 In 1881 when many
of her New Brunswick generation were emigrating to the “Boston States,” she
entered the community,51 and spent much of her religious life teaching
in the schools of Saint John.52 In the port city, the sisters were now running
schools, an orphanage, a home for the aged, a hospital, and the Boys’
Industrial Home. Within the province there were the French-speaking convents at
Memramcook, Shediac, Buctouche, and the Moncton home for the aged. And in
Saskatchewan, there was the orphanage and hospital. By any secular standard of
her day, Mother Carney was assuming a sizeable administrative responsibility.
Impressively, during her twelve-year term,
there was a doubling of house foundations.53 But these
successes were temporarily dwarfed by the ethnic tensions within the community.
Sensitive to, and struggling with, the
French-English issue within the community, Mother Carney in the 1920s attempted
to balance the opening of houses within the English and French-speaking
sections of New Brunswick.54 However, none of these convent openings were
enough to thwart what may be considered the community’s first major personnel
crisis. After many years of unsuccessful efforts to set up a French novitiate,
an agreement was made between Mother Carney and the French-speaking sisters
who wished to separate from the community.
Each side chose a symbolically significant
feast day on which to petition Rome. On August 15, 1922, the religious and
“national” feast day of Acadia, the French-speaking sisters wrote to Pius XI,
requesting essentially that he approve the understanding taken between the
“...French element and the
Irish element
within our community.”55 It was very clear to the Frenchspeaking
Acadian sisters that the English-speaking sisters within the Sisters of Charity
were in their words the “Irish element.”56
Mother Carney wrote the Pontiff on
September 8th, a feast day celebrating the birthday of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. That date also underscored the canonical and no doubt devotional
relationship of the Sisters of Charity to the Blessed Virgin – especially
following the Papal Decree of 1914 after which the community became known as the
Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception. Mother Carney urged the
Pontiff to ratify the agreement by which “our Sisters of French origin” may
constitute “themselves a distinct and separate community.”57 That same day
Mother Carney wrote Cardinal Sbarretti in Rome. As he was the Cardinal
Protector for the community, she advised him of the Council’s decision
regarding the separation: “...these sisters have been agitating for this
separation for years to the detriment of the religious spirit and the
destruction of peace and harmony.”58 This observation
in all likelihood conveyed the feelings of many of the “Irish element”
regarding the separation. Mother Carney added that “only a complete separation
would restore this peace and harmony.” Hence, she urged His Eminence “to use
your influence to have this agreement ratified by the Holy See.” “Knowing the
conditions in Canada as your Eminence does,” she confided “you will understand
the necessity of this separation.”59
Separation was granted and became official
in 1924. Under that agreement, the Sisters of Charity ceded to the French
congregation the houses serving the Acadian population. Separation also had an
immediate impact on the size of the congregation: fifty-three Sisters departed
from the community of approximately 230. It would take another five years until
the community approached its pre-separation numerical strength.
Effectively, the Sisters of Charity
withdrew from the French-speaking sections of New Brunswick and the new
congregation, the Religieuses de Notre-Dame du Sacré-Coeur, assumed
responsibility for these apostolates.60 The Sisters of
Charity were now free to devote their energies exclusively to the
English-speaking sections of the province and to the ever burgeoning western
missions.
Within New Brunswick, Rosary Hall was
established in 1926, and in 1928 the sisters assumed the teaching and nursing
responsibilities at the Maliseet Indian Reserve.61 Earlier in her
administration, Mother Alphonsus had agreed to the opening of Mount Carmel
Academy, a girls’ boarding school in Saint John.62 But undeniably the
thrust of the community’s development was the West. Even during the difficult
period of the negotiation of the separation, Mother Alphonsus had agreed to
open more houses in Saskatchewan.63 Following the completion of the separation,
western development was extended to Alberta and British Columbia.64
In 1930 when Mother Loretto Quirk succeeded
Mother Carney, she inherited a congregation completing its period of expansion
and just beginning to witness the effect of its western expansion on the
composition of the novitiate.65 As the sisters established foundations in the
West, particularly through their teaching activities, the community began to
attract western recruits. This phenomenon coupled with the separation of the
French sisters dramatically altered the ethnic composition of the novitiate.
The biographies
of some of the
early recruits from the western provinces reflected the intracontinental North
American migration patterns of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth
centuries. Thus some entrants, such as Sister Katherine Mutter who had been
born in Wisconsin, were brought as young children with their migrating parents
to the farmlands of the “last, best West” in Saskatchewan.66
When analyzing the novitiate register, and
comparing the ethnicity of entrants during the periods of 1854-1897 and
1898-1936, some striking patterns emerge. For example, the Irish component is
63.0% and 54.0% respectively; the Acadian component is 31.0% and 18.0%; and the
“Others” category (English, Scottish, German and east European) is 5.0% and
28.0%. Many of the “Others” had come from the West. The Irish component
remained more than half during both the foundation and expansion periods.67
Viewed another way, the novitiate’s ethnic
and geographic composition differed markedly from the ethnic structure and
geographic origins of the community’s administrators. The composition of the
administration was initially Irish and then New Brunswick-born of largely Irish
descent. Moreover, the Irish maintained a dominance in the position of house
superior.68
By 1936 when Mother Quirk relinquished her
post, two houses were opened in British Columbia and the last major foundation
in New Brunswick was established at St. Stephen.69 Both the
geographic dimensions and ethnic shape of the community were in place. The
congregation had evolved from a diocesan community to a Papal Institute with
foundations in eastern and western Canada. Its language was English and its
tone as set by the senior administration had moved from Irish-born to
Irish-Canadian.70
THE THIRD PERIOD...
3. Stabilization:
from 1936-1965
Following the adjustment period after the
departure of the Acadian sisters, and the rapid geographic expansion of the
twenties and early thirties, the community strengthened its services in various
apostolates by concentrating on furthering the education of its members.
Some sisters – such as Sr. Mona McGrath and
Sr. Louise Friel, who entered in the early 1920s – had arrived with university
degrees in hand.71 Although such credentials were unusual,
nonetheless, based on the research to date, some of the sisters who entered
between the twenties and forties had a higher level of education than was the
norm for the day and several had completed studies at the Provincial Normal
School. As well, a few of the early nursing sisters had trained at St.
Vincent’s Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts.72 That some of these
women may have sought out the Sisters of Charity as a way of combining a life
of dedicated service to the church and a career route for professional
expression, no doubt, is a comment on the lack of parallel opportunities in the
secular life.
During the generalate of Mother Loretto
Quirk (1930-1936), several of the sisters attended summer sessions at
university. However, with the advent of Mother Clarice Haggerty’s term
(1936-1948) the trend began towards permitting sisters, and one might suspect,
encouraging those viewed as academically talented, to attend school full time.
While some sisters attended secular institutions, the earliest numbers appeared
to have been sent to Mount Saint Vincent in Halifax, St. Francis Xavier in
Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., St.
Louis University in Saint Louis, Missouri, and Fordham University in New York
City. A number of the sisters took their nursing education at St. Joseph’s
School of Nursing which was associated with the community’s hospital in Saint
John. The pattern is clear. Generally Catholic institutions located either in
Maritime Canada or the East Coast of the U.S. were the earliest preferable
locales for the advanced education of the community. The courses of study
focused on aspects of general education, usually with a view to teaching and
various fields within hospitals.73
During this period of stabilization,
1936-1965, evidence exists to suggest that a few sisters were encouraged to
pursue doctoral work. In 1947 the first member of the community to do so
received her Ph.D. from the Catholic University of America in the field of
education. Although the congregation did not have its own university or enjoy
the access to a post-secondary institution such as Mount Saint Vincent
University operated by the Sisters of Charity, Halifax,74 members of this
community rose in the administrative ranks of the community’s high schools.
Indeed, public recognition was given to the Sisters of Charity in 1945 when
one of their number, Sister Angela Gillen, was awarded an honorary LL.B. from
the University of New Brunswick for her contributions to the field of secondary
education in the city of Saint John.75
By the 1950s and early 1960s, sisters
graduated from the Ontario College of Art, Queen’s University, Boston
University, and the University of Alberta among others. The earlier
predilection for select Roman Catholic institutions seemed to be diminishing.
Moreover, it appears that the teaching sisters frequently pursued undergraduate
degrees even though a certificate from the Normal School was a sufficient
credential. Women entering the community from the 1920s and onward were given
opportunities for educational advancement. In this sense, for many young
Catholic women, even those entering as late as in the mid-1950s, life in an apostolic
community held more potential opportunities for professional self-fulfillment
than the secular workplace. For those entering in the late 1930s and throughout
the 1940s, the convent, evidence suggests, was a generation ahead of the
secular world by providing such opportunities, especially for talented women
coming from the working classes.
The increasing emphasis on furthering the
sisters’ educational preparations in the 1930s was accompanied by extending
the community’s western foundations to the Pacific coast. In May and July of
1929, Archbishop William Duke, a Saint John native, wrote to Mother Carney
noting the needs for a school and maternity home in his Archdiocese of
Vancouver.76 After these requests were met and in the waning months of 1930, Duke
broached the possibility of having the sisters run a hospital in Vancouver.77 However, the
following year Mother Quirk advised him to postpone this project. She noted
that “Mother [Carney] and I talked the hospital over many times. We thought it
better to wait till spring owing to the great depression [sic].”78
The planning for the Vancouver Hospital
resumed shortly after the commencement of Mother Clarice Haggerty’s generalate
in 1936. In 1938 construction began and the following year the hospital was
opened. Sister Ruth Ross, a native of Nova Scotia, was placed in charge. Among
her sister assistants was Sister Camillus Duke, the younger sister of
Archbishop Duke. By 1940 the Sisters of Charity had five foundations in British
Columbia. Perhaps for the Sisters of Charity from Saint John, establishing
foundations in British Columbia was made easier, as Mother Carney observed,
because “the sisters do not think they are far from Saint John when Father Duke
is in Vancouver.”79 This remark underscores the Saint John or
eastern Canadian view of the congregation as a Saint John community missioning
in the West.
In 1938 when the Sisters of St. Joseph of
Toronto withdrew from St. Joseph’s Convent in Winnipeg, the Sisters of Charity
took up the staffing of St. Joseph’s School in a German-Canadian, but
English-speaking, parish in the north end of Winnipeg. An indication of the
mission activities of this group was evident in the extensive Christian
Doctrine program operated throughout the school year for students from the
public schools and the continuation of this program throughout the summer in
more remote locales outside the city of Winnipeg. The latter necessitated
sisters living with parishioners when carrying out the vacation summer school
Christian Doctrine program.80 As the Winnipeg work indicates for the Sisters
of Charity in the late 1930s, an assignment in a rural locale outside a major
Canadian city meant living away from the more structured environment of the
convent.81
Mother Haggerty’s administration was also
active in the extension of convents in Alberta and parts of eastern Canada. In
Wetaskiwin, forty-five miles south of Edmonton, the Sisters of Charity staffed
St. Joseph’s School for an English-speaking community containing various ethnic
groups.82 In the mid-1940s, the sisters opened one school in Digby, Nova Scotia
and two
convents in Quebec, which were however, located in
English-speaking, ethnically “Irish” areas of the province. Here the sisters
operated schools.83 In all of these house openings during the
thirties and forties, as always, within the Canadian mosaic, the bilingual and
ethnic realities of the country were a paramount concern. When Mother Haggerty
was succeeded in 1948 by Mother Joan Kane, the community had more than 375 members
staffing foundations in seven of the ten Canadian provinces.84
Mother Kane’s accession to office revealed
the ongoing control of the generalate in the hands of Irish-Canadian sisters
from New Brunswick and particularly the city of Saint John. Mother Kane
continued the emphasis on advanced education, which was by the late 1940s a
well-established characteristic of the community.
Among a number of older sisters, Mother
Kane is recalled as “the builder.” Several large scale projects were completed
during her generalate: two in western Canada, and two in New Brunswick. In
Saint John “Marycrest,” located just outside the limits of the port city in the
suburban village of Renforth, was planned as a rest and retreat house for the
sisters.
![Text Box: Dormitory, St. Patrick’s Orphanage [Silver Falls], Saint John, New Brunswickcirca 1950 with Sister Agnes Raymond Source: Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception Archives, Silver Falls Photograph Collection](./McGahan_files/image023.png){kind=small}
Ethnic divisiveness
and the attendant apprehension of missioning in far away provinces, which had
characterized the generalates of her predecessors, were almost non-existent
during Mother Kane’s administration. But her term in office had other
challenges – the complexity of which, and eventual outcome of which, may not
even have been recognized at the time.
Mother Kane, who entered the community in
1916 and spent her career in the community teaching in the schools of Saint
John, had been socialized as a young religious in the 1920s and had come to
maturation in her career as a religious during the 1930s. No doubt, during
these years Mother Kane internalized the mission vision of the community as it
developed and was implemented in the 1920s and early 1930s. Mother Kane was
fifty years old when her generalate began 1948. Having spent more than thirty
years in the community, her own life cycle and the then evolutionary level of
the community placed her in the position of carrying on the tradition of the
‘twenties and ‘thirties through the post-war period.
The twin challenges of her administration
involved responding to the increasing demands for schools and hospitals, while
dealing with the just emerging outline of a decline in vocations. Mother Kane
and her Council, working within the administrative and community role models of
an earlier
period, addressed
the needs of post-war family formation with better-educated sisters while
continuing to improve services.85
The external stimulus, which prompted
development along the previously successful lines established in the period of
foundation and refined during the period of expansion, was provided by the
countless letters arriving continuously from desperate bishops and priests in
Canada, the United States and even from Kingston, Jamaica. In the main these
dioceses were confronted with post-1945 growth of Canadian suburbia and its
needs for schools and hospitals.
These letters provide small windows on some
aspects of post-war Canadian development. Pleas for teaching sisters came from
those wishing to establish English-speaking schools in Quebec, from
Metropolitan Toronto in which local congregations were unable to extend
themselves, from Native schools in New Brunswick and British Columbia, and from
the United States.
In one letter written from the western
United States, a Montreal Sulpician noted that he had spent forty years in
Gardner, Colorado and that he needed an English-speaking community to establish
a Catholic primary school. Regarding his parishioners, Fr. Trudel, whose first
language was French, wrote his English-speaking compatriot, MotherKane in Saint
John: “They are Mexicans but the [sic] English is the official language
in U.S.”86 Even after forty years in the States, Fr. Trudel was sensitive to the
ethnic and linguistic benchmarks which would resonate in his native Canada.
Some dioceses went to great lengths to
secure the services of Englishspeaking sisters. Bishop Tessier of Noranda
offered Mother Kane a newly constructed high school for the congregation. Other
bishops appealed to the community’s missionary spirit. Writing in 1956 from
Prince Rupert, the Vicar Apostolic noted that “the loss of Faith of these
children attending public schools is staggering...”87
To all these requests Mother Kane responded
sympathetically, usually citing the lack of finances with respect to hospital
construction, or the expense of distance to some of the more far away
non-Canadian locales. But in many of the letters, particularly to those with
whom the community had a connection, such as the Redemptorists, Mother Kane
bluntly underscored the increasing lack of vocations.88
This fall in religious vocations was a
persistent concern. Today, in the popular mind, at least, the decline in
vocations is a phenomenon of the mid1960s and later. But for the Sisters of
Charity, the beginnings of a perceptible decrease in overall vocations occurred
around 1950. Although the numerical strength of the community continued to
increase until the early 1960s, the rate of vocations slowed after 1950.
Further research is needed to determine if
Mother Kane and the Council appreciated these demographic factors. However,
judging from the negative responses sent to requests for sisters, the community
was feeling the effects of the diminution in the number of recruits. Declining
an offer to build a hospital in Hamilton, Ontario in 1952, Sr. McGrath, First
Councillor, wrote: “we are understaffed in all our institutions and many of our
sisters are breaking down from doing too much.”89 Four years later
Mother Kane wrote, rejecting another hospital project: “In common with so many
communities we are getting only enough candidates to carry on the missions
already established, in fact we tried to close one small hospital on account of
an inadequate supply of nursing sisters.”90
By the mid-1950s bishops and priests were
sensitive to the personnel difficulties of apostolic women's religious
congregations. Increasingly, letters held out the prospect of vocations coming
to the Sisters of Charity if they set up a school in this or that parish.
Writing from a new suburb east of Edmonton, Alberta, Fr. Henry Peet observed:
“The population of Beverly is of the better labour class with a vivid faith and
we expect that several boys
and girls of this
parish will enter the priesthood or the religious life.”91 For him, such an
occupational choice was still viewed as sufficiently attractive within the
structure of opportunities available to the sons and daughters of the Catholic
working classes. Other priests, such as Fr. John Cunningham, a Redemptorist who
represented a Winnipeg suburban parish containing in
his words “a new
housing scheme and a new school,” tried to persuade the sisters to establish a
school in his parish. Obviously feeling comfortable in speaking frankly with
Mother Kane, and also attempting to anticipate a possible negative response
from her, he wrote: “I know you will say ‘why have you not sent us more
vocations?’” Adding that he recognized that the community could “take many more
for your charities,” he reminded her “that St. Alphonsus, Edmonton, where I was
Pastor before coming here, has sent you a goodly number of vocations and I
would ask you to please remember me to two of my former parishioners [and here
he named two women then in the novitiate].” Further personalizing his plea, he
concluded “I sang the funeral Mass for [the] Mother and Fathe” of [name of the
novice].92 Mother Kane wrote back noting that she had met him and knew of his
kindness and generosity to the sisters in the various Western missions,
especially Edmonton. But she advised him that the community was only able to
make replacements of the sisters forced by age or sickness to retire. “Many of
the girls who enter” she added, “have not finished High School and it takes several
years to train them after they finish the Novitiate.”93
From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, the
total number of religious in the community reached, and maintained, a plateau
of about 400. After the mid-1960s entrants dropped well below replacements and
the convent closings began in earnest. By the mid-1980s the congregation
numbered approximately the same as the early 1930s – about 270.94 Of course, the age
pyramid would reflect a disproportionate number of older sisters in the
congregation of the 1980s.
Mother Kane’s term ended in 1960.
Paradoxically, it was during the generalate of the “builder” that the first
traces of the new era of declining vocations and house closings began. Mother
Kane and her generation reflected an era during which religious played a major
role in educational and health services. However, their apostolates also
witnessed the emergence of greater government involvement in the policies of
their institutions. Moreover, stemming in part from the changes following the
World War II, social developments such as the renewal of a more vigorous feminism
and the improvement in employment opportunities for women in the secular world,
drained away the pool of Roman Catholic women needed to carry out the vision of
programs and development the Sisters of Charity adopted in the twenties and
expanded throughout the subsequent two decades.
In the 1950s some of the senior sisters,
then in retirement, contributed to the operation of the community by engaging
in the traditional activity of chaining the large rosary which was still an
integral part of a sister’s habit [dress]. At the same time another generation
of religious were acquiring driving licenses. Perhaps, in attempting to cope
with the intrusion of modernity into the everyday structure of communal life
and would to bridge the generation gap, when transporting themselves by
automobile, the sister in charge call upon someone to lead the rosary ....
As the sisters in the late 1950s and early
1960s travelled down the well defined highway between the community’s first
Saint John Cliff Street foundation/motherhouse and the new future motherhouse
at Marycrest, in a vehicle affectionately called by one – the “Rosary
Roadster,” – could they, or could any of us, have suspected what challenges lay
ahead in the unmapped expanse of post-Vatican II?
TABLE 1.
Novitiate Entrants
by Ethnicity, 1854-1936, %*
1854-1897 1898-1936
Irish 63.3 54.2
(93) (240)
Acadians 31.3 18.0
(46) (80)
Others 5.4 27.8
(8) (123)
TOTALS 100.0 100.0
(147) (443)
*Compiled from the Sisters of Charity Novitiate Register, Sisters of Charity Archives, Saint John, New Brunswick.