The most important member of the French Department at St Michael’s College in the mid twentieth century was Louis Joseph Bondy, at various times professor, head of the department, religious superior, and ex officio president of the college from which he had graduated in 1917. (He had taken Honour French courses at University College from professors Will, Cameron, and de Champ.¹⁸) He then completed an ma at the University of Chicago and a PhD (1927) at Johns Hopkins University. His thesis, Le Classicisme de Ferdinand Brunetière, was published in France in 1930. Father Bondy was one of the first Basilians to take degrees in secular universities, thus setting the stage for several of his future confrères, whom he encouraged to do the same.

Fourth Year I appreciated his 19th century course much more. We could even discuss a bit in class by that time. He was always very patient with our halting French, and handled our questions with respect. When his hand or fist came down gently on the table and he looked at us over his glasses while pronouncing some statement regarding an author or trend in French literature, we felt that truth was being handed down from on high and was not to be queried.¹⁹

At the end of his third year, Kirley, who was then also studying for the priesthood, took his oral exam in Father Bondy’s office. “When one of the examining professors from across campus asked me what French newspapers I read, Fr. Bondy answered the question by stating in unequivocal terms: ‘Le candidat est séminariste, il ne lit pas les journaux.’” Though he was profoundly Catholic in his teaching, it seems that he was also willing to bend a little in order to give his

students as complete an education as possible. “The story went that Father Bondy would trek down to the Bishop’s office every year to get enough Balzac taken off the Index so he could teach his courses as he wanted to.”²⁰

“Titles of honour add not to his worth,” trumpets the 1917 college yearbook, yet Father Bondy would accumulate a goodly number of these over the years: doctorates honoris causa from the universities of Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, and St Michael’s College and the order of chevalier de la Légion d’honneur from the French Republic. In 1928 Louis J. Bondy was appointed master of the scholasticate and until 1934 divided his time between these duties and the teaching of French, including the Honour courses. In the summer of 1946 he was appointed president and superior of St Michael’s College.

During the twenties, before Father Bondy came on staff, a few names stand out, the most important being Sister mary Agnes (mary Agnes Murphy), who was the first of several sisters of St Joseph on the staff of the college French Department. Later her students would “remember with gratitude not only her efficiency as a teacher but her understanding and patience in dealing with their difficulties, while carrying on the burden of a heavy program and the limited accommodation of the early days of St. Joseph’s College.”²¹ Sister mary Agnes was the author of an historical work, The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Le Puy – Lyons – St. Louis – Toronto (1951), partly inspired by her visit to France in 1938, when, in addition to taking courses at the Université de Grenoble, she visited the various convents linked to the early days of her congregation.

Thanks to her “contagious enthusiasm,” a French Club was founded at St Joseph’s College,²² whose programme in the first year was very ambitious indeed. Regular meetings were held either at the college or in members’ homes, where French dramas were read: Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and Les Romanesques, Molière’s Les Précieuses ridicules, Le Misanthrope, L’Avare, and Tartuffe (quite a daring choice for a Catholic college at that time), Augier’s Le Gendre de M. Poirier, and Coppée’s Le Passant, as well as selections from Verlaine.²³

Several of the sisters of Loretto who had been instrumental in establishing links between Loretto and St Michael’s College were later associated with the Department of French. Mother mary Estelle (Lucy Nolan) obtained a master’s degree from Queen’s University in Latin and French. “The academic world which

then opened to her gave full scope to her talents, her aspirations, her desire for the union of Catholicity with the highest intellectual achievements.” She is listed as teaching French in the 1922 and 1923 yearbooks, but in 1924 it seems she was teaching Latin only. According to her biographer, however, she maintained her interest in the French programme, putting on plays in both Latin and French.²⁴

Mother margarita (mary Cecilia O’Connor) received her ba and her ma from the University of Toronto. She is remembered “as one of the foundation stones in the Catholic Colleges in the University of Toronto because of her share in the arrangements by which the two women’s colleges became part of St Michael’s.” Mother margarita taught both English and French during the years 1929-35. Sister St Bernard (Catherine Ellen Tuffy) joined the staff at St Joseph’s College after receiving her ma from the University of Toronto in 1925. According to

in 1923, he obtained an ma from Columbia and a PhD from Laval with a thesis entitled “Francis Jammes, poète chrétien.” During his years at St Michael’s, he was a frequent contributor to the St Joseph’s French Club, speaking in 1924 on “les moeurs de la vie universitaire à Paris.”²⁵ Given Father Rush’s naughty wit, this talk must have titillated the young ladies. The following year, his subject was the Passion Play at Oberammergau,²⁶ a seemingly tamer topic. Over the years, he was sometimes an impish leprechaun, sometimes a grand seigneur, often both at once, to the delight of his students, as Kevin Kirley recalled.

Fr. Rush took us through the Golden Age of French literature, the 17th century, and he did it with panache. He not only knew the authors and characters of the course well, but he made them sound like opera singers, it was so dramatic and

Even students who were not in his classes were touched by his magic. “Father Rush taught my older brother John and taught strenuously (some would say athletically – and still others theatrically). His shouts of ‘Tous ensemble!’ – by which he elicited class recitative participation linger still in Teefy ambiance as I overheard it and recall it still.”²⁷

During the thirties, several new professors joined the staff, though not all of them

Blanche La Rochelle of St Joseph’s, for the affirmative of ‘Resolved that Canada and the United States should co-operate in opening a passage way for ocean going vessels from the Atlantic to Duluth.’”²⁸Blanche La Rochelle’s strong defence of the proposed St Lawrence Seaway helped the women of St Michael’s College win the Intercollegiate Debating Trophy in 1924. The young a student chose, however, to enter St Joseph’s novitiate and was sent to the Ontario College of Education. After a few years at St Joseph’s College School, Sister marie-Thérèse began teaching in the college division. At the same time she earned her ma and in 1944 her PhD from the University of Toronto, with a thesis entitled “Fénelon as an Educator,” making her the first female professor in the St Michael’s College French Department to hold a doctoral degree in French. The University of Toronto Sesquicentennial Long-Service Award, which she received in 1977, states that “many students still remember Sister marie-

this time to the French Department at St Michael’s, where he taught until reassigned to parish work in 1942.²⁹

Alexandre Denomy, another son of Windsor and a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto, obtained his PhD in medieval literature from Harvard, awarded in 1934 with high distinction. His principal appointment was in the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, which is part of the University of St Michael’s College, but he also did some teaching in the Department of French, where he was “a bulwark for the 16th century, and for the later Middle Ages, [especially] the troubadours and courtly love.”³⁰ Father Denomy published a large number of articles in specialized journals and was the managing editor of Mediaeval Studies from 1943 to 1956. He twice

received Guggenheim fellowships (1938, 1947) and was elected to membership in the Royal Society of Canada in 1948 and to a fellowship in the Mediaeval Academy of America three years later.³¹

The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies was host, during the thirties and beyond, to two distinguished medievalists, Étienne Gilson and Jacques maritain, whom one former student called, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Father Bondy’s “two outstanding helpers from France.”³² Though this student professed to have had some difficulty appreciating the lectures given by maritain to graduate students at the institute, he valued Father Bondy’s affording him the opportunity of attending. “Étienne Gilson, a warm friend of Père Bondy, gave a sub rosa course on Racine to the Honours French class at St. Mike’s which impressed the faculty

in our exams that year. It was kept a deep secret from you [Professor Rouillard] and our friendly professors at u.c., Vic and Trinity!” Not only did St Michael’s students profit directly from the presence of two outstanding French scholars on their campus,³³ but it was maritain who suggested to Father Bondy that he give a graduate course, From Baudelaire to Claudel, which turned out to be very popular.³⁴

One of Bondy’s students, Leo J. Klem, who joined the staff in 1943, obtained his PhD from Laval with a thesis entitled “Les Idées humanitaires de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.” One of his former Pass Course students remembers Father Klem’s classes fondly. “Our classes (ii Pass, 1948-1949), made up largely of ex-service men and women, took the form of a leisurely romp through the mechanics of French Literature: La Fontaine Fables – we memorized ‘maître Corbeau sur un

arbre perché’ for recital (written), Balzac Le Père Goriot (‘Mme Vauquer – pension à deux sexes et autres,’ an example of his rather heavy wit, said a footnote), and Victor Hugo’s famed ‘L’Expiation’ which haunts me (beneficially) to this very day.” ³⁵ Honours students, including Kevin Kirley, were also struck by Father Klem’s teaching. “With characteristic method and persistence, he introduced us to the ideas of that revolutionary century [18th] and I think he did it quite well. His lectures were always clear, well prepared, well delivered. He was not above taking a verbal swipe at one or other enlightened French idea from time to time, and this was something new for us innocent undergraduates who had been schooled to the greatest respect for everything French by our literature professors up to that point.”

Like fathers Bondy, Pageau, and Denomy, Ernest Joseph Lajeunesse was a

Franco-Ontarian from southwestern Ontario. A French-language high school in Windsor now bears his name, to honour the fact that he became the historian of his region.³⁶ At St Michael’s Kirley remembered the composition course he gave in fourth year. “He was able to give a modern and interesting application to the grammar rules we had learned from Sister St. Bernard and others. He did this by studying articles in the Sélections du Reader’s Digest. It was topical and practical. He was a kind man in class and always patient with our blunders in French. He was more amused than annoyed. We enjoyed his laugh because he seemed to enjoy us so much.” This was in the forties, but this author can vouch for the fact that by the early sixties, nothing had changed except for the issue of the Sélections that was used.

If the texts used in Father Lajeunesse’s language-practice courses were both

He had a knack for daring us to leap off into space (as does a monkey), confident that a branch will offer itself to “grab on to” as one swings along. I’ve never lost that excitement – and now page through La Presse, Hansard (French version) and some technical advertisements whose meaning is largely suggested by the pictures, diagrams and expressions of the faces of people. Good thing, too! I was, in my Peace-time Army career, sent to instruct a French-speaking Artillery unit for one week – and got away with it surprisingly well!³⁷

In the spring of ‘62 she threw a seventeenth century party for her class. She came as l’Esprit de la Tragédie, but for us her course was more like being taught by Molière’s granddaughter, with Cornelian clarity and Fenelonian devotion.³⁸

Though poor health forced Mother Olga to take early retirement, she was soon active again in a very different field, that of directing religious retreats. On 25 November 1985, in recognition of “her achievements in academic work, in education, and in ministry both within her community and in the field of spiritual direction,” Sister Olga Warnke was awarded an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Regis College.³⁹

Another Loretto sister from this period, Mother St magdalen (Loretto McIntyre)

obtained an ma in Classics before completing a master’s degree in French in 1947. Summers spent at Middlebury, Laval, and the Sorbonne greatly increased her effectiveness as a language instructor.⁴⁰ Clarence Drouillard taught the French language at the college while studying for his degree in theology. Kevin Kirley tells us that he “spoke the language very well and insisted on some basic rules of pronunciation.” Other young religious, such as W.J. Young, taught briefly at the college during this period, often taking charge of the Western Year. In the early thirties, St Michael’s had instituted the Western Year, essentially a freshman course for Americans, funnelled through the connection between Assumption College in Windsor and the University of Western Ontario in London. French was very much a part of this programme and was taught by various members of the staff.

positions.⁴¹The end of this apartheid came in a letter addressed by Father Bondy in January 1952 to the two sister institutions, which read in part:

As you have doubtless heard, we plan to erect a new building on the corner of St Joseph Street and the Park. The building will house the co-op, students’ common room, administration, library and classrooms. It is intended for both women and men students.

It seems to me that this is the proper time to re-organize our rather complex institution in order to achieve a more effective and less wasteful use of our academic resources. Next year will furnish an additional reason for this since the second year of the new general course will require additional courses in practically all departments. (185-6)