Sisters

Running the School

ometimes the girls faced difficult decisions that required advice from the Sisters. One Sister tells of a student that wanted to move from the dorms, into her own apartment, in order to have a better atmosphere for her studies. The Sister took her into the chapel, with the words, “OK, if God’s talking to you, He’s also talking to me.” They knelt down together and waited. “All of a sudden, she started heaving with sobs. I gave her a big hug and gave her some hot tea and sent her to bed and that was the end of it.” Sister had known that the move was not the right choice for the student, and had helped her to see it on her own. On the girl’s graduation night, “we were at the party, and she was in her white graduation gown with her roses and everything ... we stood in that place where we had knelt and she sang I May Never Pass This Way Again.” Many of the Sisters never realized the great impact that they had had upon their students.

Sisters in an audience in the St. Ann's auditorium c. 1950

Lois McGee, a day student during the 1950s, remembers that the students were expected to try their best, and that the teaching Sisters were always there to assist them. “I really have a happy memory. The Sisters were very unselfish”, she comments. The Sister Superior, spent many hours helping Louis with her math studies, after school and on weekends. They worked diligently, to help prepare for the Provincial Government Exams. Almost as if by miracle, the very theorem that they covered in their final study session appeared on the first page of the geometry component. Lois realized that it was through the willingness and dedication of these women that she was able to pass this subject, which she found so challenging.

The Sisters encouraged different learning experiences for the pupils, including visitors and guest speakers. The manners and good behaviour of the girls was a matter of pride to those involved with the school. During the 1930s, the school was visited by Lady Baden-Powell, who, with her husband Lord Baden-Powell, founded the Girl Guides in 1910. In a letter to the Sister Superior of St. Ann’s dated April 10th, 1935, she writes “Thank you for the kind invitation to come to your school on Friday, and I shall look forward to being with you very much, and to giving a little talk on the Guides to your students and your personnel.”

Life did not always run smoothly at the Academy. In the late 1960s, one of the pupils, who had travelled a great distance to attend the Academy, was having a great deal of difficulty adjusting to the way of life at St. Ann’s. She began an episode of arson that involved the local police and fire departments, damaged dormitory and auditorium property and frightened some of the parents of foreign boarders into sending for their children to return home. The Superior of the Academy at the time dealt with the situation with tact and grace, as she attempted to spare the community of Sisters and students the discomfort of publicity and fear. It taught her to cope with crisis situations, and to depend on herself, her community and her spirituality for strength and support.

The spiritual life of women religious was lived through their dedication to the school and hospital. They celebrated their beliefs through song, prayer and the community activities in the chapel. Feast days marked the passage of the year; Christmas, Easter and the days of St. Ann and the Virgin Mary were observed with joy, and a great deal of cooking and cleaning! The vows of poverty, taken by every Sister, only heightened their enjoyment of the simple pleasures of telling stories, rejuvenating themselves with weekend spiritual retreats, educating themselves in summer studies and creating home made treats, such as suckers and root beer, for the girls in their care.