WINDSOR, Ont. - After almost 80 years in Windsor helping first young females and then both boys and girls often described as “troubled youth,” the remaining six members of the Order of the Good Shepherd have decamped the city for a larger convent in Toronto.
The order had decided that the sisters, all but one now in their 80s, would be better taken care of at the convent’s north Toronto location.
“We’re an elderly group now,” Sr. Bernadette, the order’s leader in Windsor, said. “We’re only six sisters and we had quite a big place.”
The order, which originated in France, is based in Canada in Montreal. The first sisters who came to Windsor did so in 1929. The historic purpose of the order was to work with and pray for young women but in recent times the order has broadened its role to work with both girls and boys of all denominations.
The London diocese sent the first five sisters, who were barely out of their teens themselves, to the city to take care of well-to-do girls “who were out of control with their parents,” said Connie Martin, executive director of Maryvale, the name of the convent and adolescent centre. Martin smiles when she looks at a picture of those first nuns. “They look like they’re about 17 and terrified.”
The sisters at first supported themselves in Windsor by operating a laundry. “It became quite a thriving business,” Martin said, with wives of area businessmen bringing their husbands’ shirts to be cleaned. “And that’s how they (the sisters) made most of their money.”
When a golf course on the city’s west side came up for sale in the late 1940s the order purchased it. The convent, with its gardens, has been there ever since. When the provincial government took over funding for youth services in the 1970s, Maryvale built additional residences and hired lay staff to work with the young people. The sisters stayed on in the convent.
The order originally had two branches in Windsor. One was apostolic and worked directly with youth or taught in the community. The other was contemplative and largely remained inside the convent. The apostolics finally departed Windsor with government funding of lay staff.
In the late 1980s the order loosened restrictions and the contemplatives were able to interact more with the children. The nuns and children were living on the same site and became used to mixing. Often the nuns tended to the convent’s gardens.
“As time went on we used to go out for walks in the good weather,” Sr. Bernadette said. “And we met with the children on our walks. We’d just talk to them, and evidently it made quite an impression.”
Martin agreed. “They (the sisters) kind of ended up being like grandmothers,” she said. And even today the institution has a “strong spiritual focus. . . . You can feel it almost when you’re on the grounds.”
In part that’s because the convent’s religious crosses, pictures and statues remain. But while the youth at Maryvale are not compelled to attend religious services, Bible study and ecumenical sessions attract a good number of them, she said.
With the nuns’ departure Martin said she feels she’s “lost my best friends. I just hate it, a number of us were devastated by it. It’s a deeply sad feeling.”
The sisters had still worn traditional habits and their symbolism around Maryvale was powerful. “You look out the window on a wintry day and they’re bundled up in coats but then you see their habits flopping beneath them,” she said.
Of the departing nuns only one was under 70, the remainder were between 82 and 95 years of age.
Sr. Bernadette said the move to Toronto was necessary. Staying in Windsor with a lack of resources meant the sisters had difficulty getting through the day. “They could last much longer if they were in a bigger group.”
Retired Windsor police officer Frank Chauvin was with the nuns when they said goodbye.
Chauvin was long associated with the convent and helped with mechanical work around the aged buildings.
“I had a good relationship with them,” he said, “And when I had lung cancer they were praying for me and I guess I made it. I enjoyed all my time with them.”
Through the order Chauvin was also able to make contacts with Third World countries where he established orphanages and charities to help impoverished or abused girls. The largest of them, Foyer des Filles de Dieu, which houses 66 girls and a medical clinic, is in Haiti.
“It worked out great because I expanded my orphanages to every country and I used the Good Shepherd Sisters,” he said.
(Stang is a freelance writer in Windsor, Ont.)
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