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Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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GILLIS, MARY WINNIFRED (1886-1970)

GILLIS, MARY WINNIFRED, Sister St Charles of the Congregation of Notre Dame; teacher and principal; b. Montrose, P.E.I., 21 Nov 1886, d/o Paulinus Gillis and Mary Foley; entered religious life, 1911; d. Montreal, 23 Feb 1970.

M. Winnifred Gillis taught school for five years in her home village of Montrose before she entered the Congregation of Notre Dame. After completing her novitiate she spent twenty-seven years at St Mary's Academy in Newcastle as teacher and principal. Reports which she submitted to the provincial Education Department in the 1930s show her to have been teacher of the senior class (grade eleven), as well as the administrator of the school. "Under her direction hundreds of young women graduated from high school," and the educational leadership which she exercised was respected throughout the Miramichi community.

Gillis left Newcastle in 1940. After four years in Montreal she was appointed superior at Souris, P.E.I. In 1950 she was named mother provincial of the CND for the Maritimes. This was the culmination of her career, but other appointments followed. During the last five years of her life she was a resident of the convents at Truro and Charlottetown, respectively. In October 1969 she returned to Newcastle to participate in the 100th anniversary celebration of the founding of St Mary's Academy. She died four months later, at age eighty-three.

Sources

[b] CND archives [d] Leader 26 Feb 1970 / Education reports 1935-39; Leader 18 Aug 1950, 17 May 1963, 9 Jan 1970


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