One of our family stories tells of Mary, exasperated, saying to Mother, "You and your precious sons!" Mary suffered all the disadvantages of being the youngest child in a male-oriented household but she took a special place in her father's heart because she shared many of his interests, which he nourished as she grew up.
Sometime after the Religious of the Sacred Heart came to Winnipeg (1935) she had been taken to visit them and was charmed with the house and by the nuns. Dad's sister, Nellie, was an RSCJ who died in Roscrea, Ireland in 1923. Mary was told that it was a good thing there were no Loretto sisters in the area or there would have been a difficulty about where she would go to school since these were "Mother's nuns." Mary enrolled in the Sacred Heart school on Westgate Road for her Grade 9 in 1940 and loved it: in addition to the standard Manitoba curriculum, she was introduced to mythology, logic and psychology. Gweneth Lloyd and Betty Hay who founded the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Company taught dancing at the school.
After graduating from Grade 11, which gave entrance to University, Mary chose to take Grade 12 but not at the girls' college in Winnipeg -- Dad was not happy about her going out to the university campus -- but went to the Convent of the Sacred Heart (Sault-au-Recollet) in Montreal. She recalls, "My ideas about boarding-school fun soon vanished." Her unhappiness as a boarder must have concentrated her mind because she won a scholarship offered that year for the first time to a Canadian "Sacred Heart girl" for Maryville College, St. Louis, Miss.. (Coincidentally, the prize was in honour of Mary T. O'Loane, a Canadian nun who had taught at Maryville, a sister of the Denison family of Winnipeg whose son was a friend of Des.)
She graduated from Maryville, May 1948. Mother and Dad travelled to St. Louis for the ceremony, then the three took the train across to Washington, D.C. to visit the James Gaffney family there (Patrick's uncle), then up to Montreal to see the Glenny family and to take the long train-trip home.
Mary worked for a year at the University of Manitoba Science Library, and at Great West Life Insurance who offered her the prospect of becoming an actuary – a considerable compliment, we all thought. Instead, September 1949, she entered the novitiate of the Sacred Heart, Albany, New York, where, in 1952, she made her first vows in the Society, once again with her parents in attendance as well as her priest-brother Des, who had been ordained the year before, and her uncle Walter, S.J. Soon after, Mary returned to Canada briefly to teach at Sault-au-Recollet in Montreal. She returned in 1956 to being a student at Manhattanville College, Graduate Division, Albany, N.Y. In September 1957 she was awarded her M.Ed., then went on to Rome to prepare for her final vows which she made February 10, 1958, at the Society of the Sacred Heart 'Mother House' on Via Nomentana in Rome.
In March she returned to Winnipeg, to her parents' delight, to teach maths, physics, English, history and Latin at the Westgate convent where she remained for nine years – during which the Vatican Council introduced a whirlwind of changes that directly affected Mary, her institutions and lifestyle. In 1969, she moved to Vancouver to UBC for studies leading to a Library Sciences degree.
That done, she was appointed in 1970 to the position of librarian at Sturgeon Creek Regional Secondary School, Winnipeg, where she spent four years, followed by four years at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Vancouver, as librarian and maths teacher.
Mary then spent 1977 to 1982 in Montreal in administration, Society of the Sacred Heart during which time she attended Dalhousie Library School, Halifax. Through 1983-1997 she worked in Winnipeg and Toronto as the librarian and secretary to the Canadian Religious Conference West, and in Montreal as librarian at the Canadian Centre of Ecumenism, also researching history of the Society of the Sacred Heart, Canada. In 1998 she was placed in charge of the aging French-speaking community on rue Wilfrid-st-louis, Montreal, and returned to the Sherbrooke Street convent in September, 2001.