WALSH, CATHERINE (1864-1925)

WALSH, CATHERINE, Sister Walsh of the Religious Hospitallers of St Joseph; teacher, and superior at Chatham, 1897-1903 and 1909-15; b. Chatham, 18 Jan 1864, d/o Richard Walsh and Ann Dwyer; sister of Ellen E. Walsh and Richard D. Walsh; entered religious life, 1882; d. Montreal, 23 Apr 1925.

When she was six years of age Catherine Walsh's parents moved to Chicago. She attended school there for two years and then returned to Chatham with her mother and the other children of the family, soon to be followed by her father as well. At eighteen she entered the novitiate of the Religious Hospitallers of St Joseph and elected to become a teacher. She had a 1st class license by June 1887 when she reported four years of teaching completed.

Positions of responsibility which Walsh occupied included those of principal of St Michael's Academy, and mistress of novices, assistant superior, and superior of the congregation at Chatham. During her second term as superior she was given much credit for the part she played in the founding of St Joseph's preparatory school, which opened in 1913 in the former Hotel Dieu Hospital building. A day and residential school for boys in grades one to four, St Joseph's was conducted in parallel with St Michael's Academy for the next eighteen years, and like the academy, was taught by the Religious Hospitallers.

In 1914, while she was still occupying the office of superior, Walsh's health began to fail. Periods of rest and recuperation alternated with brief assignments at Chatham and elsewhere. In 1918 she felt well enough to be 'missioned' as superior to Campbellton, where a new Hotel Dieu Hospital was being conducted, but illness continued to beset her, and she had to be recalled to Chatham in 1921. She was receiving medical treatment in Montreal at the time of her death.