The Sisters of Saint Martha, Charlottetown, Respond to Social and Religious Change, 1965-85

Maintaining an Influence: The Sisters of Saint Martha, Charlottetown, Respond to Social and Religious Change, 1965-85 Heidi MacDonald, University of Lethbridge, focuses her In the last decade, several historians have most recent research on coming of age during the Great argued convincingly that church and state were more Depression in Canada. intertwined than previously thought with regard to social welfare practices and policies in the early decades of the Abstract twentieth century. Most notably, Christie and Gauvreau, Between 1965 and 1985, the Sisters of Saint Martha of challenging contrary claims by Allen, Owram, and others, Prince Edward Island used the expanding social welfare contend that, "Unlike the fate of progressive reform in state to their advantage, successfully negotiating space the United States, which after World War One became within new secular social services structures and increasingly divorced from Christian endeavour, in Canada influencing government policy on the delivery of key the increasing specialization in the social sciences, the social and health care services. creation of such new professions as social work, and the Résumé growing dependence of government upon expert scientific Entre 1965 et 1985, les Sisters of Saint Martha de l'Ile knowledge...occurred under the governance of the du Prince Édouard se sont servies de l'essor du Protestant churches" (1996, 246). Paula Maurutto makes programme d'assistance sociale de l'état à leur avantage, the same basic claim regarding the Roman Catholic en négociant avec succès une place dans les nouvelles Church in Toronto, writing "Catholic Charities became structures des services sociaux séculaires et en influençant increasingly entrenched within the expanding welfare state les politiques du gouvernement sur la prestation de system" and "embraced social scientific knowledge and services sociaux et de santé clés. began to train and hire its own professional staff" (2003, 7/9). This article moves the focus forward and argues that Roman Catholics, and especially Roman Catholic religious orders, continued to play a key role in social welfare and health care into recent times. Between 1965 and 1985, the Sisters of Saint Martha (SSM) in the province of Prince Edward Island (PEI) used the expanding social welfare state to their advantage, successfully carving out a space for themselves within the new secular social services structures and influencing government policy with respect to the delivery of key social and health care services. The influence of women religious, commonly called Sisters or nuns, is assumed to have waned in the www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 32.1, 2007 91 second half of the twentieth century, because of (Danylewycz 1987). government appropriation of their work as well as labour shortages among congregations of women religious after Addictions Foundation of PEI Vatican II. Certainly, women religious decreased their The Sisters of Saint Martha ventured into social involvement in hospital work in Canada by more than work in 1931, when they opened a social services 30% between 1970 and 1980; there was a corresponding department in the Charlottetown Hospital to provide relief decrease in the number of Catholic hospital beds by more to those suffering the effects of the Depression and to than 50% between 1970 and 1975, from 60,954 to serve the elderly and maternity patients who required 26,356 (Pelletier and Cellard 1990, 170, 199). During home nursing care. After making 30,000 home visits in the same period, the number of women religious in their first decade, the Congregation prepared to expand Canada also fell; feminism and the broader changes in their social work commitment by sending two Sisters to Catholicism related to Vatican II (1962-65), in particular, earn social work degrees at St Patrick's College in led women religious to question the value of vowed life Ottawa. This professionalization, strongly supported by the to the degree that the number of women religious in wider church, granted credibility to the Sisters who then Canada decreased by 52% between 1960 and 2000, from used it to legitimize their right to public funding later in 59,712 to 28,639 (Center for Applied Research in the the twentieth century. After their graduation in 1943, Apostolate 2003; Canadian Religious Conference 1966). with the most modern social work principles in hand, Yet the shrinking army of sister-social workers and sister- these Sisters expanded their Social Services Department, nurses did not necessarily result in a retreat from or moved into a separate building, and renamed their diminishing influence on social welfare policies and mission the Catholic Welfare Bureau. Their success was practices. Even with their relatively small numbers, acknowledged by a representative of the Canadian women religious maintained an influence by using their Welfare Council who declared the Bureau to be "The first resources strategically. and by far the most important [social agency in PEI]." It has been too easy to assume uncritically that They also received a small grant from the provincial institutionalized religion has played a small role in government (MacKinnon 1950; PEI 1954). As several modern social welfare. The relationship of the Sisters of more Sisters of Saint Martha earned social work degrees Saint Martha (Charlottetown) with the province's in the 1950s and 1960s, the Congregation was able to departments of health and social services offers a strong staff a second social welfare bureau in Summerside example of continued denominational influence on social beginning in 1956. Thus in the late 1960s, despite the welfare policy and the delivery of health and social state's appropriation of women's social welfare work, a services. Since 1916, the Sisters of Saint Martha have pattern that Fingard and Guildford describe for Halifax in performed a variety of tasks for the 45% of the this period (2005, 9), and despite falling membership in population of PEI that was Catholic: from domestic labour women religious' congregations, the SSM's experience and to teaching and to distributing health care services initiative earned them the right not only to venture into (MacDonald 2004). Toward the end of the twentieth the secular sphere but also to provide leadership in century, the sisters used their special status as vowed creating a much-needed new social service. women and their professional qualifications to justify their Sister Mary Henry (Catherine Mulligan, 1902- continued involvement in social services and to 1996), arguably PEI's most prominent social worker in circumvent male authority and privilege, just as women the second half of the twentieth century, crusaded for an religious had done in Quebec between 1840 and 1920 92 Atlantis 32.1, 2007 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis alcohol addictions treatment centre in the late-1960s. She Lantz and newly appointed senior provincial social repeatedly noted that while alcoholism was the most worker, F.R. MacKinnon (Tillotson 2005), the new PEI serious social problem on Prince Edward Island in the Deputy Minister of Social Services, John Eldon Green, grew postwar era, so far "we were only putting our finger in increasingly unhappy with Sister Mary Henry's refusal to the dike and we were not doing anything about the real constitute a board of directors (PEI 1978, 11). causes of alcoholism" ("Oral History" 1984). In 1966, Sister Mary Henry, however, continued to the SSM converted the former St Vincent's Orphanage into operate the centre as she always had, buoyed by the a rehabilitation centre for alcoholics. Sister Mary Henry obvious need for a detox centre and the satisfaction that was reported to have "met all kinds of opposition from she was alleviating some real social problems. She government and from others who had ideas on how believed she could most efficiently serve drug and alcohol alcoholics should be treated. All that made no difference. dependent people without having to be tied to a board She was convinced that God wanted her to lead the way of directors. Then in 1975, the Deputy Minister severely in helping alcoholics and she had faith that He would limited Sister Mary Henry's influence on the Addictions provide the means some way, she knew not how. Foundation by having a crown corporation assume Numerous are the stories of the risks she took in responsibility for the operations of the Foundation. Sister purchasing property, equipment or whatever was needed Mary Henry was one of the members the Deputy Minister for the project..." (Cullen and Cullen 2005, 241). Another appointed to the Foundation's new board of directors in Sister of Saint Martha, Sister Bertha McCarthy, joined the 1976, but so too was a senior member of the provincial staff of the Addictions Foundation in 1972 ("Sisters' Department of Social Services, no doubt largely to keep Ministries" 1978). Sister Mary Henry in check in the same way that Sister Mary Henry recalled that when the children's aid societies monitored denominational addictions centre opened, "We had no staff, we had no institutions earlier in the century (PEI 1978; Lafferty money, we had nothing. We had 1,109 admissions in two 2003, 118). Sister Mary Henry retired two years later at years...it was an awful struggle" ("Oral History" 1984). the age of seventy-six, undoubtedly proud of her According to a 1984 oral interview, she had an accomplishments even if a bit frustrated with the many arrangement with a Charlottetown judge who offered procedural changes the Deputy Minister had insisted certain offenders the chance either to go with Sister Mary upon, but another member of the SSM, Sister Bertha Henry to the Addictions Foundation, or to jail, thereby McCarthy, continued to work there until 1998 ("Sisters' signifying that the goals of the church and the state Ministries" 1978). Her long-term contribution represented regarding rehabilitation were in some ways equal, despite a more balanced partnership with the provincial a clear denominational influence at the Addictions government, board members, and staff, yet continued the Foundation.

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