Jubilarians Share Journey
The results are stupendous!Sister Mary Fitzpatrick 70 yearsOne of God’s greatest gifts in my life has been the many wonderful people, lay and religious, that I have met, worked and live with, to this day. The changes in religious life since Vatican ll have been an energizing and a growing time for me. Truly, the Lord has been good to me!Sister Anne Hudec 60 yearsOver the years, the people were always very nice to me. I miss Sr. Marie Dumont. We...
Vocation Day
BY SISTER LUCY KEARNEY Regi-Notre Dame Catholic High School took advantage of the Feast of St. Marguerite Bourgeois to host a Vocation Day. As we arrived at the school Grade 11 students were assigned to greet the invited guests, and I must add, made us feel very welcome. After a few minutes of conversation, we proceeded to the auditorium where the band was filling the room with excellent music selections. A memorial table in honour of...
Activist/Street Nurse at Vigil
A high profile social activist joined other vigil-keepers at the weekly silent vigil at Kingston’s City Hall on Friday May 18, 2007. Raised in Kingston, nurse Cathy Crowe specializes in advocacy for the homeless in Canada. She has won fame as a street nurse working with homeless and poor populations in downtown Toronto. Cathy’s book Dying for a Home: Homeless Activists Speak Out is a first-hand account of Canadian homelessness and the practical...
Farewell Faithful Vigil Keeper
BY SISTER PEGGY FLANAGAN As I recall, Jesus of Nazareth had a soft spot in his heart for fishermen. Perhaps he still does. Oliver Gerald Doyle, who died on the second of May, was a follower of Jesus, but not just because he loved to go fishing. Oliver also took seriously the words of Jesus that told him to ‘bring the good news to the poor.’ He read the encyclicals on social justice and he practised them daily. He could often be found on picket...
Poverty Task Force
General Superior elect Sr. Pauline Lally spoke during the Mayor’s Task Force on Poverty held in Kingston April 30, 2007. The speech is reprinted here. In the 19th century the Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul set about working on behalf of the orphaned, the sick and the aged. We even made exhausting and humbling “begging tours” to the towns’ wealthier districts, seeking money to clothe and shelter those in our care. In recent years...
Government fails in anti-poverty efforts: interfaith group
Article reprinted with permission from Kingston This Week. BY LYNN REES LAMBERT Local News – Friday, April 20, 2007 Updated @ 8:21:28 AM The provincial government has made progress on the push to wipe out poverty over the last three years, but it is a long way from solving this issue. The findings from a new book about poverty reveal nearly half a million Ontario children are growing up poor, food banks have never been busier and the working...
Restoration Project
Organ pipes are removed in early SeptemberAfter 37 years of use, the pipe organ in the Chapel at Providence Motherhouse is being restored. After almost four decades, age is taking a toll on the once rich sounding instrument. The four-month restoration project began in late July by a Kingston-based company. Originally from Quebec, Alain Gagnon has enjoyed a long and well-established career as a pipe organ specialist including eleven years with...
Health Care Gift
left to right: Roger Wright, Chair University Hospitals Kingston Foundation, Sr. Pauline Lally, Sr. Diane Brennen, General Superior Sr. Kathryn LaFleur, Sr. Sheila Langton and Denise Cumming, Ex. Dir. University Hospitals Kingston Foundation.The Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul, founders of Providence Continuing Care Centre (PCCC), have made a major donation to hospital-based care that includes Hotel Dieu Hospital and Kingston...
10th Anniversary – NACAR
Close to 500 vowed Religious and Associates from religious communities across North America recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of the North American Conference of Associates and Religious.(NACAR) Sr. Diane Brennen, Council liaison for Providence Associates and Providence Associate Alayne Scanlon attended the historic conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. The conference celebrated the achievements of NACAR, including the development of a...
Music Conference
Marg Spooner, Director of Music, HeathfieldSudbury was the location of the 2006 Ontario Liturgical Commission Summer School in early August. The conference was unique in that it was a bilingual event, involving 110 musicians from Ontario and one from Newfoundland. The well-planned week was a great opportunity for social interaction with other church musicians. Father Murray Kroetch gave the keynote address, Many Voices, One Assembly. He told us...
Northern Connection
Sr. Una Byrne at the Baptism of a Neskantaga First Nation child. The child is in a tikinagan, a traditional cradle board that the mother carries on her back.The smell of smoke these mornings reminds us of the ever-present danger of forest fires in the north. Although Moosonee is far from the fires right now, some of the communities in our diocese are being affected – from James Bay west to the communities north of Thunder Bay. All except one of...
Service Honoured
General Superior Sr. Kathryn LaFleur receives the Distinguished Service Award from Rev. Anne MacDermaid, Chair of the Board of Management, Queen’s Theological College.General Superior Sr. Kathryn LaFleur received the 2006 Distinguished Service Award from Queen’s Theological College. During the October 16th presentation, the following citation was read by Rev. Anne MacDermaid. A woman who exemplifies “faith in action,” Sr. Kathryn LaFleur has...
Commitment Ceremony
Pictured from left to right: George MacDonald, Maureen MacDonald and Marie O’Neill.The Sisters of Providence welcomed three new Associates at a Commitment Ceremony May 27th. Sister Theresa Moher mentored the trio in preparation for their Commitment. The evening prayer took place at the end of the Associates’ spring retreat featuring guest speaker Anne Patri zia Shore, the director of the Pastoral and Education Ministry at Assumption University...
Teaching A Mission
Sr. Marian McCallum is the head of Religious Studies at Holy Cross Secondary School.In the corner of a second floor classroom at Holy Cross Secondary School in Kingston, a handful of male students huddle to discuss the previous night’s high school hockey play-off game between rivals Regiopolis and Holy Cross. As the chatter amplifies, teacher Sister Marian McCallum is able to hush the boys with one soft-spoken word, “gentlemen!” Another student...
Inter-Faith Gathering
A sizeable crowd showed up to Memorial Hall on May 24th to take part in an Inter-Faith Gathering to discuss Religious Faiths and the Poor: Call and Response.Those who have faith and do righteous deeds, – they are the best of creatures. Qur’an, 98:7 A sizeable crowd showed up to Memorial Hall on May 24th to take part in an Inter-Faith Gathering to discuss Religious Faiths and the Poor: Call and Response. Sponsored by Kingston’s religious...
Welcome Tara
Tara Kainer joins the staff at Providence Motherhouse as the executive assistant to the Co-Director of the Justice and Peace OfficeWho knows how we become the people we are? I can’t say for sure what happened to turn my attention to social justice, or why I’m compelled to try to leave the world a better place than I found it. Ours was a large family. We discussed the state of the world over supper and this probably nurtured a social conscience....
What is Trafficking?
Trafficking in persons means the recruitment, transportation, harbouring and trade of persons, by means of threats, force, abduction, fraud, deception, and abuse of power for the purpose of exploitation. That exploitation may be sexual, forced slave labour, or even the removal of bodily organs. We might think slavery is a thing of the past, but in today's world two million women and children are being bought and sold before our very eyes. But...
Being Present To Others
When members of the Sisters of Providence leadership team visited Sr. Una Byrne in her ministry, they found that spiritual life in Northern Ontario is anything but frosty. The weather, however, was certainly chilly when Sisters Jeannette Filthaut and Sandra Shannon visited Moosonee in January of 2001 as part of their ongoing connection with congregational members in their areas of ministry. Because travel in the North often involves skidoos and...
Let’s Save Our “Eco”-onomy
BY SISTER PAULINE LALLY The following article by Sister Pauline Lally appeared in the Kingston Whig-Standard on October 19, 2002. Some provincial governments, under encouragement from Alberta and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, are putting forth reasons why Canada should not sign the Kyoto Treaty. The main reason, they claim, is the economy. I agree, the economy is our bottom line. But I refer to another economy, the primary economy, our...
Pilgrimage from James Bay
The Moosonee group, including Sister Una Byrne, at the Native parish in Toronto by the teepee.BY SISTER UNA BYRNE World Youth Day, who can describe such a experience? It is best described by the Holy Father’s dream, as expressed in his Evening Vigil, that it would be “a powerful moment in which the young people of the world could meet Christ, who is eternally young, and could learn from him how to be bearers of the Gospel to other young...