THE McCORKELL FAMILY AND ITS AFFILIATES

By

Edmund J. McCorkell   C.S.B.

Table of Contents

Part   I	The McCorkell Line			Page	 2
		The Original McCorkell Family	
Joseph McCorkell Emerges		   "  	 8
McCorkell Exodus			   "	11
	Sarah O'Donnell		   "	11
	May O'Leary			   "	13
	Peter McCorkell		   "	15
	Vincent McCorkell		   "	17
	Ignatius McCorkell		   "	21
	Philomena McLaughlin	   "	25
	Rosella Gettings		   "	28
	Edmund McCorkell		   "	30

Part II		The O'Donnell Line			   "	34

Part III	The Mangan Line			   "	44

The original document appears in black type.  Additions and annotations are shown in blue type.
This document has been shortened from the original. No information related to the McCorkell’s has been deleted.  The full document can be obtained from Jim McCorkell (jim.mccorkell@mts.net).  Father Ed wrote this history in the early 1960’s, before the advent of the internet, easy travel, and easy telephone communication  He had to rely on direct contact through his travels,  written information (letters), and on oral histories.

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THE  McCORKELL  FAMILY AND ITS AFFILIATES

Preface

The story I began to tell was the origin and growth of the McCorkell family to which I belong but after proceeding on this idea for several generations the story seemed to take itself out of my hands and became the story of Ellen Jordan whose towering figure began at this point to dominate our history and give it unity.  Deploying like a commander-in-chief her younger sisters at strategic points across the continent, she fortified her home front by the marriage of her eldest daughter, Mary to Joseph McCorkell thereby drawing my own branch of the McCorkell family into what can be described as a giant merger.

All this sounds mysterious and militaristic but it will become clearer as the story develops.  The date of that important marriage was February 13, 1877.  From that moment the story is a different one.  But its widened scope is due to addition and not to subtraction.  Accordingly, I shall proceed as I first intended giving the McCorkell background, and then taking notice of its enrichment by its confluence with the Jordan family, carrying all the main lines forward successively, beginning with the McCorkell line.

In writing about a many-branched family with its roots in the pioneer period and without prehistory in Ireland or elsewhere, the writer has to depend largely upon memory, his own and those of senior citizens who have survived.  It is true that there are some documents; baptismal and marriage records and cemetery burials, but these are not complete nor well organized, nor is the writing easy to read when it is found.  There were, of course, no civic registrations of births, marriages and deaths, as we have today.

This dependence upon memory has largely determined the style of the writing.  It is a story of people and events from the point of view of the writer.  It includes what he knows and is interested in. It is not necessarily the point of view of every reader, nor within the scope of his interests.  On the other hand the reader will escape the dullness that is inevitable in a telephone directory style, which is little more than a sequence of names.  In short the writer aims at investing the story with a human interest, though he does not claim to have entirely succeeded.

	I gladly acknowledge assistance from others.  Many a telephone call has cleared up a relationship or made a date precise.  My sister, Rosella (Mrs. Gettings), as one of the eldest in my immediate family, naturally knew my paternal grandfather quite well, and was able to penetrate his habitual reticence, to the meager extent revealed here. More significantly an investigation into the origin of the Heenan family on the occasion of a family marriage at Toronto in 1966

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solved some mysteries, even if it created others, all investigations are apt to do.  Still more substantial help from genuine research studies has been offered by Martin Duffy of Qualicum Beach, Vancouver Island, B.C., and by Mrs. John J. Dalton of Toronto.  Formerly with the C.P.R. communications department at Winnipeg, but now in retirement, Martin Duffy has told in a circular letter a fascinating story of how his interest in the subject was aroused, and how his new, exciting and fantastic discoveries, despite the occasional blind alley or mare's nest, led him to a fuller knowledge of his own identity as one related by affinity, at least, with the Jordan: family.  Oddly enough his findings have been largely in the West and Southwest where we have a larger membership that one could suspect.  This has made possible regular, if not annual meetings of the "clan" membership near Oakland, Calif. Still more oddly I think is the fact that the gaps in Martin's findings have been in central Canada, otherwise Brechin, where it all started.  For Martin the longest way round was the shortest way home. Frances Dalton on the other hand, has left no gaps in her competent study of the entire Mangan chapter in our history.  As a daughter of Patrick Mangan, she began with a good knowledge of her subject, and has significantly increased it.

Part I - The McCorkell Line

(a) The original McCorkell family

Griffith”s Valuation of Donegal (1857) shows a McCorkell , Augustus ,  in Carricknaslate, Clonleigh, Donegal  Augustus McCorkell appears in the Griffith Valuation 1858 in the townland of CARRICKNASLATE in the Parish of CONLEIGH, Donegal. He rented 18 acres and was a farmer, he married a Jane Ward. In the same area in 1824 a Gustavius McCorkell appears in the Tithe records in the townland of PORTANURE, CLONLEIGH, as well as a Peter in CURRALANE, CLONLEIGH, probably a brother. Lastly in 1796 a Patrick McCorkell appears in the Flax Growers Bounty list for Donegal, again for the Parish of CLONLEIGH.
I know that Augustus McCorkell was a Roman Catholic the names Patrick. Peter and Gustavius appear nowhere else in my research and would be considered native Irish names rather than Ulster-Scots, Scots-Irish to whom almost all other McCorkells I have researched prior to 1850 would have belonged.

Patrick Joseph McCorkell, my grandfather, was born in 1822 in County Donegal, not too far from Downpatrick which though in the neighboring County Down is a kind of a metropolis for the area. [In fact Donegal is nowhere near County Down.  The nearest town I can locate so far is Strabane, in County Tyrone, given as the hometown of Augustine McCorkell, son of Patrick Joseph, in 1850 on the passenger list of the ship Mary Campbell, the ship he came to Canada on with his aunt, Elleanor Doherty.  (  MITCHELL, BRIAN, Irish Passenger Lists, 1847-1871. Lists of passengers sailing from Londonderry to America on ships of the J. & J. Cooke Line) Further information (Griffiths evaluation, 1901) may place our Irish origins at Carricknaslate, Clonleigh, (Lifford) Donegal] Patrick's own father was Augustine McCorkell, and his mother was Mary McGill.  For his wife, Patrick chose Sarah Doherty, and thus we see beginning to appear the family names used by the McCorkell clan in the first two generations on this side of the Atlantic.  Patrick McCorkell's first son was naturally called Augustine.  He was born in Ireland, but whilst he was still a mere child his parents migrated to Canada, landing at the port of St. John, New Brunswick.  The year was 1847 or 1848.  It seems that the child Augustine was brought to Canada by his aunt the following year to rejoin his parents. [In fact Augusta is shown in Lists of Passengers Sailing from Londonderry to America on Ships of the J&J Cooke Line and the McCorkell Line by Brian Mitchell; GPC 1988 as having left Derry in 1850 on the ship Mary Campbell, arriving in Quebec City.  His age on the passenger manifest is given as 4 years and his address in Ireland was given as Strabane.  Immediately above his name is the name of Ellenanor Doherty, who I presume is the aunt Fr.Ed mentions.]

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The McCorkells made their home in St. John for a few years.  The breadwinner of the family worked with a construction company and on one occasion described his work as "carrying the hod".  Another child, Edward, was born, and subsequently Patrick, feeling the urge to penetrate more deeply into the heart of the country took his family to Toronto and settled them in 
a house on Richmond Street.  Edward, the second child, died while still quite young but others were born in due course.  These were James, Catherine, Joseph (my father), John, and Sarah who
died young. [Sara is shown on the 1871 Census as being aged 12.  We have no other information of her.  The census shows her as having died within the previous 12 months.  Strangely, none of the other McCorkells are listed in the 1871 Census yet we know they were alive and living in the area.] 
	The McCorkells were welcomed in Toronto by the Dohertys, their in-laws, one of whom had come there before 1837, doubtless my grand uncle John Doherty.  In his wife's prayer book there is recorded under date Nov. 20, 1837 his marriage with Margaret Esmonde (note the name Esmonde) and a family of 12 is listed. [Perhaps if this prayer book still exists, the relationship of Elleanor Doherty to the McCorkells could be established.]  The family came to be well established in so-called Doherty Corners, but this was perhaps later.

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            My own acquaintance with the Dohertys began when I came to Toronto as a student in 1907.  At that time, Tom Doherty, a first cousin of my father, lived with his wife, Jane at 19 Henry Street. They had no children.  Tom died soon after that date, and at his funeral Martha Doherty appeared.  She had been living with her sister, Mrs. Dickson, in Clyde, N.Y.  Two children of the Dicksons, Bernadette and Esmonde, came to my ordination in 1916, and I returned their visit a year later.  This contact I have kept up ever since with Bernadette, who is living still in retirement at Elmira, N.Y.  The Dicksons in Clyde told me that another Doherty sister called Sarah lived in Minneapolis.  When I visited my brother Vince in the Twin Cities some years later I went to see Sarah, who was then Mrs. McFeely.  She told me that a nephew of hers lived at Vancouver, B.C. and I thereupon recollected that I had met a son of that nephew at Upper Canada College and his name was Cameron McFeely.

	There was a third sister in the Doherty household.  She was Rose, and she took for her husband, Tom Waldron of Orillia.  They had 2 children, Vincent a railroad engineer who died young, and Kathleen who later went with her parents to Regina, where she met and married Dominique Melanson.  I knew the Melansons later at Vancouver where they are still living.  Their only child is Gloria who spent a year in graduate study in Toronto where she impressed her relatives with her culture and charm.  On returning to Vancouver she became the wife of Michael McDonough, a helicopter pilot, and has become the mother of 4 wonderful children.  Who among us can doubt that Gloria McDonough recapitulates in a striking way the entire Doherty strain in our many-branched family tree.
	I am certain that my father was born in Toronto in 1854.  He was almost certainly baptized by one of the Basilian Fathers (to whom I myself belong) who came there in 1852 to look after the spiritual needs of the Irish immigrants and also to open a college for boys, later to be called St. Michael's College.  There is little doubt that Fathers Soulerin, Vincent, and Moloney, all Basilians, knew the McCorkell family, and instructed the boys, particularly the older ones in Christian doctrine.
	Just when the McCorkells moved to Brechin, 80 miles north of Toronto, cannot now be determined.  My sister Rosella once heard my grandfather say that he came to Brechin on the same day as Andy Cox.

	
	That does not help us much.  Peter Cox, Andy's son, was in the dark about the precise date.  It is probable that my grandfather bought the farm (it was owned briefly by an earlier settler) before bringing the family from Toronto.  Described in the official bill of sale as lot 10, concession 7 (north half) it was 100 acres in area but to it was added another wood lot, mainly swamp, located within concession 8 near Mud Lake. [ Land records show that the sale of the North 1/2 of Lot 10, Concession 7 by Edward Mc Hale to Patrick McCorkell was registered on Feb. 1, 1860] This had special value as a source of wood for winter, and for lumber and timber to erect the various buildings proper to a farm.

The Township was called Mara.  Why?  The wheels in a government official's head are unpredictable in their turnings, and inexplicable in their decisions.  It has been stated in Sacred Scripture, Exodus XV-23, that the waters of Mara were bitter, and this may be the reason why the land around and north of Brechin has been saddled with the name Mara.  There is plenty of evidence that there was an oversupply of water there because Lake Simcoe was higher than it is now.  Most farmers had to drain their land and keep the drains in good order.  In that sense the waters of the Brechin area were bitter.  Roads were quite primitive of course. It is an interesting example of the irony of history that the McCorkell farm has survived the "bitterness" of its origin.  It is now on the modern Trans Canada highway.

	There were 2 distinct groups of Irish settlers in the Township of Mara at that time.  One was called the Connaught settlement, presumably from the area in Ireland where the settlers originated; the other was called the Dungannon settlement for the same reason. At first both settlements were in the one single parish of Uptergrove (St. Columbkille's Church--Irish certainly).  Later when Brechin was raised from the dignity of a mission and became a parish in its own right, the area called the Connaught settlement was squarely in the middle of it.  It is, of course, a curious fact that the church then built for the new parish was dedicated to St. Andrew, who in the popular mind is associated with Scotland.  This confusion of identities is due to the fact that the most energetic citizen, the pusher, Foley by name, in the whole movement, though an Irishman himself, had a wife who came from Brechin in Scotland.  It was therefore her place of ethnic origin that are immortalized in the name of the village and the title of the church.  It is, in short, an example of Irish chivalry. Foley had pushed successfully for a separate school (in Brechin the '80's be it remembered) and put up $10,000 of his own money as an endorsement.   He earned the right to give the village its name.

	The McCorkells came to the Brechin area in or around 1860.  In that year Augustine, the son, would be about 12 or 13 years old, and James, the next one would be 10 or 11.  The boys would be able to give some help to their father at that date.  However, Augustine stayed

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only a few years.  There is no record of the date, (he emigrated in 1870 – US 1880 census) but the fact is he went to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he raised a large family.  We had very little contact with them after that.  Once the eldest girl Sally (Sarah again!) came on a visit to our farm. She was on her honeymoon after a second marriage, probably in 1900. It was interesting to meet her.  She had candy for me, a 9 year old and that helped, but she cheerfully disclosed the news that she had divorced her first husband.  Our contact was pretty fragile after that.  At a later date, probably in 1910, my brother Vince met a McCorkell in California, who seems to have originated in Ohio. Still latter the president of the Continental Oil Company in Houston told me that he had worked in Cleveland for a man by the name of McCorkell who claimed to have laid the first oil pipeline in America for John D. Rockefeller. [Augustine did go to Cincinnati (immigrated 1870) where he raised his family, with his descendants still living there.   This I discovered through the internet with a posting at a genealogical site.  Jan McRoberts responded and from there we were able to trace Augustine’s history.  We know he had at least 7 children, Sarah, Michael, Mary, Joseph, Charles, Augustine F. ( Augustine ), and James.  There may have been more children but their names are unknown at this point.  Sarah’s first marriage was to a man named Charles Hawkins and after her divorce she married Ed McCormick. We have no information related to Michael. Mary married Al Boley and had two children, Alice and Robert.  Joseph married Elizabeth Kelly and they had two girls, Mary Veronica (passed away 2006), and Anna May. Mary Veronica never married.  Anna May married Garland  Shank and they had two children, Mary Janet and Judie Ann.  Mary Janet married  Marty McRoberts.  Judie Ann married Stanley Goya and they had two children, Angela and Glen.]

James, the second son in the original McCorkell family, worked with his father for only a few years before taking a homestead in North Dakota. (He married a girl from Ontario, [Mary Gorman]  and raised a family of 3 girls and a boy.  Two of the girls, Agnes (Mrs. Stee) [married Reuben Stee ] a retired teacher, and Katherine (Mrs. Haugan) [married Cyrus Paul Haugan] are still living in Minot, North Dakota.  Both are widows.  Katherine has a son who is an engineer, (Ken) and lives with his wife and family in Calgary.  She also has a daughter, Mrs. Alvin Korom [Dorothy is this daughter.  She married Alvin Korom and had four children; Allan James, killed in Viet Nam in 1966, Kristine Lynn who died as a child, Katherine Theresa who married Duane Lee Peterson, and Jennifer Kaye who married Kenneth Lester Moe] in Minot. [The son of James McCorkell, John, reportedly left North Dakota for Minneapolis where he died circa 1922/1925 with no record of descendants]  I enjoyed several visits to my Dakota cousins who certainly went to some trouble to welcome me.  Agnes once came to Toronto, and we went to Brechin together to see the old farm where all the McCorkells in America originated [This statement is not true.  There are many other McCorkells in North America not related to our family].  I recalled to her delight that her mother had once visited our farm when I was a boy of 10 or 11.  Such visits, especially when there is an interchange have proved their value in keeping a family interested in each other-blood is thicker than water.

The next one in the original McCorkell family was a girl, whom I knew as Aunt Kate. (Kate McCorkell) She never married.  I remember her as a dressmaker in Toronto, and I particularly remember that she never went back to Brechin after her father died.  But she was exceedingly kind to me during my early priesthood.  She died in 1927.  There was likewise another girl, Sarah, who died young and was buried with her mother in Uptergrove. [ this is the Sarah shown on the 1871 census]

Between these two McCorkell girls there were born 2 McCorkell boys in Toronto, Joseph, my father, and John in 1854 and 1856.  Both lived out their lives as farmers in the Brechin parish.  Leaving the role of Joseph to be unfolded as the story of my family develops, let us glance at the supporting role played by my uncle John McCorkell. He married an important person in my life (she was to become my godmother) her name was Mary Ann McDermott.  John and Mary Ann settled on a farm within 2 miles of the original family farm where he was born and raised. [This was the North ½ of Lot 9, Concession 10, sold to Frank Heitzner in 1926 ] He was a public-spirited man, widely known as a civic leader, and a good practicing Catholic, whose religion did not prevent him from becoming reeve of Mara. [ John is recognized on a plaque  in the Municipal Administration Building in Brechin. There must have been a minimum of research done as his name is mis-spelled as “McCorkill”] His home was one of the houses of hospitality where young people got together at intervals to dance with Paddy Mayock playing the fiddle.  Uncle John died in 1928.

The sons and daughters of John McCorkell were as numerous as their first cousins in the Joseph McCorkell family, to which I belonged.  We attended the same country school, copied one another's homework, played football and baseball together, and competed in spelling matches at school interminably.  As we grew older social evenings and dances brought us together with our neighbors and with one another.

Pat was the eldest in the John McCorkell family.  (His full name was Patrick Joseph, after his grandfather.)  Unlike my own elder brothers who left early for the big world beyond the horizon, Pat remained to help his parents while the rest of the kids were small.  He gave about 15 years of his life to this self-denying vocation.  One good result of this (for me) is that I was thrown into his company when I came home for holidays.  We went playing ball together at various points of rendezvous, even as far as Kirkfield. We went fishing with Dominic O'Donnell at Mud Lake.  No contaminated fish there! We even made a stab at duck shooting.  Indeed Pat became more like a brother than a cousin.

Pat went to Western Canada finally and became a railroad man, married Anne McGowan, a former school companion, set up a home in Edmonton, adopted 3 children, one of whom became a priest in Edmonton, another did a turn of patriotic service as an air pilot in World War II, and a third, a daughter, Catherine, who trained as a nurse, and later became Mrs. Fitzgerald of Montreal.  She is the darling of her father's heart as an only girl can often be. [in fact these three children were two of the four sons and one of the two daughters of Patrick Joseph’s brother, James A and his wife Lila Barker – see below]

So much for Pat McCorkell's children.  Let us go now to Pat's brothers and sisters, my first cousins, the sons and daughters of my uncle John McCorkell.  (I have to spell it out to keep the reader from getting mixed up.)  James was Pat's brother closest in age to him. Jim married Lila Barker and went to live at Saskatoon.  Both have now passed away.  Two of their sons have made names for themselves. Wilfred, the eldest, is an outstanding physician in Saskatoon, and Jack is a retired army officer living at Victoria, B.C.  There is also Margaret in Jim's family to complete the list. [The children adopted by Pat and Anne McCorkell were three of the children of James A. McCorkell and Lila Barker.  Nobody seems to know why they were adopted.  The two boys adopted were Patrick Cyril who later became a Jesuit Priest, and Joseph.  Joseph died a single man  The girl was Catherine.]

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Continuing with Pat McCorkell's brothers and sisters, the next after Jim is Sadie.  She married Mike McCann, a farmer. Both are now deceased but four children carry on their name: Edmund, (the name keeps recurring) Jack, Mary (Mrs. Muir) and Rita, who married the "man from Glengarry" and became Mrs. Cameron.

Still continuing we come to Catherine.  We were in class together in the country school.  I remember with a smile her skill in free-hand drawing with chalk on a blackboard.  Her high school was Lindsay convent, and her training as a nurse was in a New York hospital.  At this point in her career she married J.J. Butler, but her conjugal happiness was terminated by the death of her husband from a heart attack a few years later, following which she returned to industrial nursing in Toronto.  At present she is chatelaine to her brother Pat at Edmonton, whose wife died several years ago. Catherine has literally spent her life doing good to others, that has been her vocation, and she has followed it to the letter.  She has been her family's guardian angel.

There are still a few more on the roster of sons and daughters of John McCorkell.  There is Mildred, who is precisely of my age. She took high school at Lindsay convent, became a teacher, got a school in Western Canada where she discovered Joseph Hanley, a C.N.R. stationmaster, an eastern too, by jove.  The two had to go West to find each other, and what a discovery it was!  They have lived in Vancouver many years and their son, Dick and daughter Therese, also live there.  They have also a daughter Marie at Calgary, and all told nearly a dozen grandchildren.  Joe has retired from railway supervision, and Mildred from the interesting but unrewarding sideline of politics.  Where did she get her passion for politics?  Don't you remember that her father, John McCorkell was reeve of Mara.  If you have forgotten you have simply failed to follow me in this piece of your own history.

And now there is Wilfred, or rather was.  He died young, but his name goes on to the next generation in his distinguished nephew, the medical doctor in Saskatoon.  But where did the name Wilfred originally come from?  Canadians, at least will remember that Sir Wilfred Laurier was Prime Minister of Canada at the turn of the century.  My uncle John McCorkell could not pass up the chance to call one of his sons by the name of Wilfred.  He was too much of a politician to forget that name.

The next is Madaline, the youngest daughter of my uncle John McCorkell.  Her advanced studies were in music which she taught locally for a few years, and she was organist in the Brechin church. She married Jack Cronin, an Ontario Hydro Commissioner, now retired, and they live at Norwood, Ontario.  They have a daughter, Anne Marie, whose husband is Garry Smith, a rising young lawyer in Toronto.  They have also a son, Jackie, who is a school principal in an old Ontario

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village where he lives with his wife, Lenore.  It is twenty or thirty miles north of Toronto.

Now the last of the sons of my uncle John is Kenneth. He is a pharmacist in Ottawa.  His name derives from Brechin where the pastor who baptized him was Kenneth McRae.  Ken and his wife, Aileen, have one son, Edmund.  How did they come to think of that name?  They have also two daughters, Denise and Aileen.  They are teachers, graduates of good Ottawa schools and colleges.  Why do so many McCorkells choose to be teachers? I have made that choice too.  Why?  I hope that for all of us this choice springs from an instinctive awareness that "teaching is a noble profession".  How could it be otherwise since Holy Scripture, speaking of the last judgment says: "starry bright forever their glory who have taught many the right way." Dan. 12:3

(b) Joseph McCorkell emerges

Up to this point my grandfather, Pat McCorkell, has been in the foreground.  His migration, the names of his sons and daughters and of his first wife have been listed, and touched on rather briefly. Only one of them, John, the youngest son is given a fuller treatment. The reason is that he has been more closely connected with my immediate family than any other who is not a member of it.

My own father, Joseph McCorkell, merely mentioned before, now emerges as the leading character, and becomes like Abraham of old the father of sons and daughters who will greatly enlarge the family tree in their turn.  This section (b) will be much longer than section (a) and perhaps more exciting.

Now to proceed:  Patrick McCorkell, the founder of the family in Canada, died in June 1904.  The wife whom he brought from Ireland, Sarah Doherty, had died some years before, and he had then married Mrs. John Mayock, a widow in the settlement, installing her in a second small house on the farm a short distance from the log mansion which was the original home of the family.  I remember very well this second Mrs. Patrick McCorkell, whom I called Grandma, though I knew nothing of the complicated relationships in our family.  Evidently she loved Joseph and John, her stepsons.  I often heard her speak in praise of the way Joe and Jack got along together as they grew from boyhood to early manhood, working with their father, until they set up homes of their own.  "Never a harsh word between them" she would assure me. She was, of course, typically Irish of that period, believing in ghosts and other supernatural signs.  The tragic accidental death of a farmer a mile away from our home provided Grandma with the opportunity to descend upon me with her certainties about ghosts in the form of lights flitting across the fields for a whole week previous to the

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accident.  Obviously they were fireflies, but how was I to know.  I began to fear the dark.  But there was plenty of time in daylight for me to visit grandma and sample her cakes and other goodies, even at the risk of another ghost story.

I can also say confidently that she had the traditional Irish piety, conspicuously devoted to the beads (as Granddad also was) and to other vocal prayers, vocalized to the level of an Irish whisper.  She wanted to be anointed every time she felt ill, which came to be annoyingly often.  One Sunday on the return from Mass, the family vehicle, which was described as the double buggy, was met on the road by Dr. Gilpin, driving back from a sick call. Pausing to exchange greetings, the doctor said to Grandad "How's the old woman?" To which Grandad returned: "Some times she is asking for the priest, and sometimes for the doctor, and between the two of you I do not know what to make of her."

Finally, there is another memorable circumstance of her life. She had a niece, Mary Kirby, and a nephew, John Kirby, recent Irish immigrants.  For a time they made their home with their aunt, especially John, who in fact never quite separated himself from the McCorkell family to which he was bound by ties of affinity.  He was truly quite a character in his own right.  He worked with several farmers, and especially with my uncle John McCorkell for several years, and for a longer stretch with my father.  Eventually he was seized by the wanderlust and went to Alberta.  What money he had saved up, he loaned and lost, and finally he returned to Brechin where his friends set him up in a small tobacco store.  He died in 1948.

As indicated above, Patrick McCorkell, the founder of the family in Canada died in 1904.  His retirement to a new house fifteen years earlier had cleared the way for my father to marry, and assume the direction of the farm.  But the expenses he soon had to face were considerable.  The drainage of the farm was obsolete, the livestock had to be improved and increased, a substantial rent had to be paid to his father for the farm, and to all this there was added the expenses of a growing family.  (There were six children born in eleven years.)  So the old log house had to serve for another twenty years.

As the turn of the century approached my father nevertheless decided to go modern.  He planned and built a new house, brick of course, and large too, with gothics and other gimmicks like some of the more affluent neighbors had.  Sarah, Rosella, and May, the three eldest were growing up, and longing for more contact with life. Even Peter and Vincent were no longer mere kids.  They had ideas and along with older sisters were keen about the new house.  Discussions

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in the family circle about the design were spirited, if not always profitable.  The intriguing idea of a spare room (unthinkable until now) especially caught the fancy of the girls.  Certainly there was divergence of opinion.  Once there was a heated controversy where the spare room ought to be located, the discussion took place in grandad's house nearby, where a wider freedom of speech was tolerated.  But at last the old grandfather's patience was exhausted. "Spare rooms" said he, "yes spare rooms and rare rooms, and rooms you will never spare".  That was the end of the planning for that day.

The new house was completed in 1897.  With the idea of getting a preview I stole into the house when the painters were at lunch, and finding open cans of paint and brushes lying about I made colorful use of them, and might even have finished the job, had not the banging of a storm door (it was November) sounded the alarm.  Every McCorkell within earshot, including my irate father converged upon me, and I was soundly spanked.  Little consideration was given to the fact that I was only 6 years old.  I was made painfully aware of the generation gap.

The house was opened just before Christmas 1897.  I remember being worried about Santa Claus being misled, and so passing us up for the year.  Christmas had a special glow about it and it did not cease with Xmas.  The spaciousness of the new house introduced an era of gaiety and camaraderie.  Several house-warming dances were arranged. This was a field day for the three girls, who were becoming of marriageable age.  Mother had taught them the arts of housekeeping and baking, and as time went on their reputation spread.  As I remember the specialty of Rosella and May was pie making; apple, raisin and raspberry.  Pete and Vince used to steal pies at intervals from the pantry, and purchase my silence by allowing me a piece, ridiculously small.  Once Vince pilfered a raisin pie, hot from the oven, and put it in the woodpile to cool whilst he went for a neighbor, Pat McCann, to give him a treat.  In the meantime the pie was missed and a search was made.  It was discovered, and so when the two lads got there the woodpile was bare, and as in the Mother Hubbard story, the poor lads got none.  I was innocent enough to be the cat's-paw of Vince who master minded a variety of escapades.  Once I was silly enough to go to my grandma's house (quite near) to get a cup of sugar for Vince, (he even brought me the cup). Rosella wanted the sugar to bake pies, he said.  I was however so poor an actor that Grandad got suspicious, and following me out, drove me back to our own house at the point of his walking stick, whilst Vince looked on from a safe distance.

The thrill of the new house wore off all too soon, and farm life resumed its drabness, at least for my older brothers.  For me however there were interesting things to learn about the farm.

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There was also the novelty of going to Mass on Sunday in the new double-buggy.  No lesser vehicle could carry all of us, or rather all but one, who would stay at home to keep an eye on things.  I some times did that, but preferred to get to Brechin, and to Mass, out of sheer curiosity, I am sure, or a hunger for experience.  Sometimes the organ would play and that was something. But the biggest thrill I got up to my tenth birthday was the first Masses of the two Roach brothers (Tom and William) who were ordained together in St. Basil's, Toronto, (they were of course, Basilians): this thrilling experience was sprung (on me at least) without warning.  It was a quick glimpse into a world, entirely different, one I had never dreamed of, and it started me thinking and dreaming.

My Mother used to tell me about a former Brechin boy, Quigley by name, who went to Chicago and became a priest.  Since the boy's family were far from wealthy, there must have been a divine intervention.  The finger of God was there.  I am sure that Mother used to pray that something like that would happen to me.  Years afterwards at Chicago, when I was in graduate studies there, I went to see Father Quigley.  He was able to identify me when I gave him my Mother's name.  He was a family connection of some sort.  Anyhow he was the first vocation to the priesthood from Brechin parish.  There were to be others in due course.

(c)	The McCorkell exodus

It is the experience of life that families grow up and separate, each to begin over again the human (and divine) work of founding new families.  The McCorkell exodus began early.  The big year was 1900. Sarah, the eldest was married in August, May five months later, and at some date in between when the plowing was done, Peter went to earn some money felling trees and logging in a lumber camp in Northern Ontario.  Three departures in five months:

Leaving for the present the rest of the family at the old homestead, brick house and all, on the 8th concession line, with the clock of time standing still, let us follow each of the three McCorkells who went their separate ways in 1900.

(d)	Sarah

Sarah was married to Dominic O'Donnell on August 7, 1900 and went to live on the O'Donnell farm in Sandy Point.  Her new home, her very own henceforth, was less than four miles away and we saw her fairly often.  Nonetheless she was missed by her family.  As the eldest daughter

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she had been Mother's right hand in all those tasks assigned to women on an Ontario farm of those days - berry picking in the woods, preserving fruit, gardening, producing eggs and poultry, milking and buttermaking.  Such farm produce was used not only for the table, but as barter at the village store for groceries, and especially at Christmas to exchange for cloth in Orillia for the making of clothing for the children during the winter.  Sarah was the seamstress of the family.  I remember well her making a coat and trousers for me a month before her marriage.  It was a special mark of affection to do her last sewing job for me though I understood it but vaguely at the time.  She was hoping I would go to school and be something.

It was not too long before she was busy doing all these things for her own growing family.  Eventually there were five boys and four girls in that household.  A lively and progressive group, they had the first Ford car in the parish and with it they carried their liveliness everywhere though it was centered in their Sandy Point home. To boost the family economy the girls went to work in Toronto, but often came home, doing their part to create its well deserved name as a house of hospitality.  Sarah and Dominic made that spirit possible by their example and understanding.  There was less of a generation gap there than in any other family I have known.  They had many difficulties to face but they took them in their stride.

Time, however, works great changes, removing some from the scene altogether, and displacing others.  Edmund, the eldest, coming home from Toronto for Thanksgiving 1931 was killed at the Uptergrove railroad crossing (since removed).  Luella worked for some years in Toronto as a supervisor with the Bell Telephone Company and then married Dollard Healy an Atherley farmer.  They have a son Edmund and twin daughters Patricia and Maureen all now married and living in the Orillia area, also two grandchildren.  Ava, my god child (she was born before my ordination) also married a farmer husband, John Shier, and their picturesque farm home on the Trent Canal is within easy distance of Sandy Point.  Lawrence (Larry) now a widower, lives in Toronto.  His sons, Edmund and Basil and daughter Doreen are married with their own families.  Larry has a unique distinction of being already a great grandfather through Edmund's grandson recently born.  Starting with the mother of Ellen Jordan, the earliest name we can identify, and who is buried in Uptergrove, the line covers 8 generations.   Marguerite, now a widow, helped her husband, George Holland, in his accounting business and for a time continued to manage it following his death.  Sons, Paul and Peter and three grandchildren all live in Toronto.   Albert, too, hit the trail and located at Lakefield, near Peterborough.  He and his wife, Mary have four daughters, Rosemary, Mary Frances and twins Margaret and Patricia.  Roy has been a distinct success with the Canadian International Comstock Company.  With exceptional ability

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he has discharged responsibilities for his company in many provinces of Canada, particularly in the West, and is continuing to do so at Toronto, the centre of their construction industry. He married Mary Boyd and has a son, Kevin.   Cecilia O'Donnell became a registered nurse but has since married Jerry Finnigan, a St. Michael College graduate and at present the librarian at Campbellford High School.  They have three sons and a daughter who has become a nun, Sister Mary Patricia of the Felician Sisters. This capable girl, now a teacher, was baptized Ave Marie.  She has three brothers, as already indicated, and someone has wittily said that one should have been called Pater Noster, but they are named Bill, Brian and Michael.  All of these children, and indeed all of Sarah's grandchildren, are a credit to their name.

I have left Raymond only of the Dominic O'Donnell family to write about.  He is mentioned last because he is in one sense the most important.  If he were to be given a title by the Queen, and could accept it, he would be called O'Donnell of Sandy Point, and his wife would be the Lady Alice.  He remains at the old stand, keeping the tradition alive.  Alice and Ray have three sons and one daughter.  The 2nd son, John, is the right hand of his parents now standing by them to direct the affairs of the original family seat, but the others, Gerard and his wife Claudia, David and his wife Joanne, Mary Leah and her husband Raymond (all the above recently married) may be found at many weekends speeding their way from Toronto to their former hospitable home at Sandy Point.

(e)	May

My sister May (third in the family) was married to John O'Leary on January 1, 1901, and went to live at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where her husband was foreman in a lumber yard.  It was a sadder leave-taking in her case, because unlike Sarah, May was going far away.  When could she come back again?  It weighed heavily on her heart.  Three days after her going my 10th birthday occurred.  I didn't even think of it, but she did.  She sent me a birthday card. It was doubtless the first piece of mail I ever got in my own name. How thrilled I was!  How important I felt!  Only later did I come to realize that she was the important one, overflowing with love for the family she was leaving to create one of her own.

Several of May's children were born at the Soo, four I think: Mary, Carmel, Gladys and Hazel.  I saw them when they were small, having worked for my brother-in-law in the lumberyard at the Soo during one summer vacation.  That was in 1909.  May and her husband came to my ordination in 1916, but shortly after that moved to Seattle: where three more girls, Dorothy, Madeline, Genevieve, and one boy, Edward, the youngest, were born.

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In due time all these O'Learys chose life partners and made their home. in various places, with the exception or Gladys who died quite young.  Mary and Carmel are now living in California with their husbands in retirement.  Mary and her husband, Paul Mieseke, have one son, Richard married and living in California.  Carmel is married to Les Holmes.   Hazel Bodie, May's widowed daughter, lives with her mother in Seattle. Another daughter, Dorothy Carroll died about 5 years ago not too long after her remarriage.  She had been widowed and had a daughter Barbara Miller and two sons Philip and Lawrence Conklin, all living in the Seattle area.     Madeline and her husband, Tom O'Connell live in Seattle also but they are tireless travelers (Tom was a railroader) and they may be seen almost any place in America or abroad.  Their son and daughter Tom and Patricia are each happily married in the area and have interesting and smart families.  There is in fact a Tom O'Connell III, doubtless a chip off the old block. Pat and her husband, Jim Johnston, have four daughters.  Edward O'Leary the youngest and only son, is an Inland Revenue official.  He too lives in Seattle with his wife, Jessie, and their three lively and inventive boys, Mike, Tim and Neil, each on the verge of college or within it already.  The only O'Leary remote from her childhood haunts is Genevieve.  She lives in a beautiful town house in Washington, D.C. with her husband, Michael Dane, and their daughter, Michelle.  Both parents are employees of the federal government.  Convinced that travel has high educational value the Danes get on wheels or take to the air on regular long holidays.  I have met them at least once at the West coast.	
	
My sister May came home from Seattle to Brechin once before her father died.  That was in 1933.  At that time she went to see Gertie Evans, and other school friends still living at Udney.  It was a joy for her to see them.  It was too long a journey to make more than once.  Circumstances changed later, however, when air travel became common, safe and relatively cheap.   Accordingly when Genevieve began to live in the national capital, May had an additional and compelling reason for going East.  She made a number of flights, and usually managed a side trip to Toronto and Brechin.  When Rosella died in 1965, however, May was loath to face the ordeal again.  The old home without Rosella would not be the same.  When the year of my golden jubilee as a priest (1966) came around, the Danes at Washington knew what to do.  They pressed May to visit them and they themselves took her to Toronto with their young daughter Michelle, along with Hazel who had accompanied May from Seattle.  One has only to glance over the series of snapshots taken by Mike Dane and handsomely mounted in an album to live the jubilee over again.  It is an artist's story of that sacred event.  It is a joy to me because it is a record of a remnant of my family, of whom May and I are the sole survivors, coming together to thank God for the divine gift of a vocation to the priesthood fifty years before.                             

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	Here ends the O'Leary section of the McCorkell saga.  I may finally say, however, that after the Basilian Fathers founded St. Mark's College at the University of British Columbia, I had the opportunity, or at least an excuse, to visit at intervals Vancouver, B.C. and I never did so without going to see the O'Learys of Seattle, the McCorkells of Kirkland, Washington, and hopefully the glory of Mount Rainier.

(f)	Peter

	I now return to the main thread of the story where the McCorkell family as a single unit was breaking up.  Sarah, as I said, married in August 1900 and May followed her example at the end of the year. In the meantime, Peter (he had a second name Leo) set out in the late autumn of 1900 to earn a few dollars felling trees and cutting logs for a lumber company in Northern Ontario.  When Spring arrived he decided not to return to the family farm but to seek a new career in the United States.  That was the trend to a marked degree at that time. Accordingly Pete went to Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. where May and her husband had already made their home.  There Pete entered the service of the South Shore Railroad which runs from the American Soo to Superior at the other end of the lake of that name.  In these two cities, one after the other he lived out his railroad career as fireman and engineer. In the Soo he met an Uptergrove girl, Tillie McNulty, and married her. In due course 4 children were born to them: Leo (popularly called Corkie) Norene, Doris and Joseph.  In 1916 Pete and Tillie came to my ordination bringing with them their eldest boy, Leo, who was then 10 years old. He served my first Mass.

	In Superior, Wisconsin, where Pete moved his family when they were still quite young there were better opportunities for work and better schools.  The children were exceptionally smart and worked together with their parents to build and pay for a fine house whilst continuing their schooling.  I shall write about them one after another in turn.   Leo, Pete's eldest, made his university course at the University of Minnesota, and within a few years became a highly successful insurance executive at Superior.  He married Bernice Collins, and built a home for her, but died in early middle life of high blood pressure, leaving his wife with 3 children.  Fortunately Bernice was a highly qualified teacher, able to hold good positions and to earn promotions.  Above all she was a good manager and the children made steady progress.  Mary, the eldest, eventually married Pat. Byrnes, a public relations executive and now lives in Green Bay, Wis. with her husband and 2 children.  Patrick McCorkell, Leo's only son, is a college graduate, a Jesuit seminarian, and hopes to be a priest in a few years. I shall be more than happy to bequeath to him my role as chaplain of the far-flung McCorkell family for baptisms, marriages, funerals and other sacred events.  Kate McCorkell, the youngest of Leo's daughters was a mere babe when her father died.  She took her college course at Purdue University where she met her husband, Lieut. Thomas Weirs.  They were married at Superior last August (1970) at a large family gathering and are now with the American Army in Europe.

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	So much for Leo McCorkell and his family.  Now for his sisters and brother in the Pete McCorkell family.  Norene, the eldest daughter, became a teacher temporarily and eventually married Frank Kabat, a highly successful business man in Ann Arbour, Michigan. He is now retired and Frank and Norene live half a year at Ann Arbour and half in Florida, depending upon the season.  They have three children.  The eldest, Hugh, is professor of pharmaceutical studies in the University of Minnesota and lives at North Oaks farm in suburban St. Paul, with his wife Rita and three active, eager and forward looking sons.  I was happy to see them at my own golden jubilee in Toronto when they were five years younger than they are now.  That family believe in education by travel; the parents had taken the children to see Washington, the political heart of the nation, and were taking in the jubilee festivities at Toronto on the return.  The second child of Norene and Frank Kabat is Judy.  She is an honour graduate of the University of Michigan and the wife of Bud Osmun in Ann Arbour.  They have four children with attractive names, Cindy, Sandy, Dale and Mark.  May God bless them. The third and youngest of the Frank Kabats is Michael, a graduate of Michigan State and now manager of a large hotel in Cleveland. He married a Toronto girl, Patricia King, whose father was a Ford Motor Company executive in Canada.  They have two children, Ann and Geoff and perhaps a third.  Numbers get out of date rapidly in a family history.

	And now we come to the third member of the Pete McCorkell family.  This is Doris, sister to Leo, Norene and Joseph, and wife of Ray Braun, a pattern designer in Elkhart, Indiana.  Doris and Ray had two sons and a daughter all born in Superior, before their parents moved to Indiana.  The eldest, Douglas, interrupted his college course and married young.  He has musical talent and a beautiful voice.  Terence is the second boy.  In his college years he was a first class swimmer and diver, and almost made the American Olympic Team.  He too is married and has a family in Elkhart.  So Doris is a grandmother many times.  Her youngest grandchild is Linda's son, John Burger, a few months old at the present time (Feb. 1971) living at Milwaukee, where his father is a radio and television operator.  Ray Braun did an excellent business in Elkhart for 15 years or thereabouts, but unfortunately his health began to decline at this point and he finally died in early middle age.  It was a sad blow to Doris, who loved her husband very much, but she bore the loss bravely for the sake of the children at school.  God will reward her for her courageous effort to carry the family burden alone.

	The youngest member of the Pete McCorkell family is Joseph, a public relations director, living with his wife Effie in a beautiful suburban home in Kirkland, Washington.  They have twins, Scott and Kay. The former was an exchange student for a year at a German high school. This family too believes in education by travel.  Kay, the twin sister, is preparing to teach.  She is a girl of character and charm and will doubtless be a popular and effective teacher.  As an old teacher myself I welcome her to the noble army of the martyrs.

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(g) Vincent

	Let us resume the drift of the family exodus when Sarah, May and Peter left home in 1900.  The situation remained unchanged for 4 years except that Vince took over the burden (at 15 years of age) of being my father's principal helper.  Of course Dad got what was called a hired man. He would not let Vince do the heavy jobs he wanted to do but he did let him look after the horses, a man's job.  Vince shrunk only from milking cows.  This latter was Rosella's job.  She was the reliable housekeeper, but Mother was able to get her nieces from Toronto and Buffalo, one succeeding the other, at giving a helping hand at the household duties.  Sometimes we had a hired girl as well.

	The year 1904 is in some respects a historic year for the family, chiefly because the old patriarch, and founder of the family in America, Patrick McCorkell, was gathered to his fathers.  He died on June 12, 1904, in his eighties, though none of us knew his exact age.  I used to play tricks on him (helped by Vince who devised most of them) and he would retaliate only by pretending to chase me with his walking stick.    He sometimes called me a bloody faggot, and I never knew what that meant.

	With the death of my grandfather McCorkell, my own father came into full possession of the patrimony, which was little more than the land and buildings, with the machinery and livestock.  My Aunt Kate McCorkell, my father's sister, a dressmaker in the city and unmarried, came to the funeral.  It was her first and last appearance. She went away in high dudgeon when the will was read.  Doubtless she did not got much from the will - only what her father specified, and he hadn't seen her at all in recent years.  Wills are a prolific source of family friction.  I often wondered if she were really maltreated.  When I went to live in Toronto a few years later (1907) I began to pay her the occasional visit and was kindly received.  She even relaxed to the point of allowing me to do her banking business (her principal bank failed at this time) but I could never get her to make peace with the family, and pay a visit to the old home at Brechin, even at the time of my ordination.  Ironically enough at her death in 1926 at a rest home in Whitby, she left the bulk of her estate to her surviving brothers.  I was in the West at the time she died, but came home hurriedly to celebrate her funeral Mass.  I seldom fail to remember her at the Altar.

	Now to resume the family history, I went to Orillia in 1904 to attend high school.  I had to live there because there was no bus service nor any feasible train service at the time.  So I really left home - as I look back now I am sure that I did not realize that this was a break with my previous life.  I was often back at home in holiday time, and gave some help (I was always counted on to milk cows) but I was never back on the same old terms.  I had burnt my bridges.  Farming at least was not to be my vocation.  This was doubtless my father's decision even before it was mine.

	It seems clear enough to me now that my brother Pete's leaving home in 1900 was quite a shock to Dad.  I believe it was the right thing for Pete to do.  There really was a generation gap, and Dad began to see it only then.  He needed that shock, and (as I think)

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he was ready to count on Vince, the next in age, and to try for better personal relations with him.  Vince was clearly less quick-tempered than Pete, who was in fact merely like his father, a chip off the old block, so to speak.  I have always tried to excuse Dad for his brusque and some times sharp behaviour.  One has to bear in mind that he did not even own the farm until his father died in 1904, and that was thirty years after Dad was married.  He did have the farm on a rental basis, but he was not really independent.  Then too Mother's chronic illness from about the time I was born in 1891 left Dad somewhat isolated and lonely at times.  Anyhow I feel certain that he planned to make it easier for Vince than he had for Pete and my going to high school was part of the deal.  I was too impractical to be a farmer anyhow.  I was kind of a dreamer.  It was well known and laughed about that I had been sent on one occasion to "mind a gap". All I had to do was to be on the job to prevent the cattle from going through a temporary break in the fence between two fields.  But there was lush clover in the other field, and the cows rushed me.  I believe they call it "red dog" in football language.  And so it came about that to say of man or boy on the farm that he couldn't mind a gap was to rate him utterly useless.

So Dad had ideas about Vince.  But Vince had ideas of his own. He had been chafing under the dullness of farm life at the time, and had in common with boys of his own age such as Pat and Jim McCorkell, (his own cousins) the Gaughans and Mangans of the Connaught settlement, in common with these, I say, he sought to relieve the dullness of farm life by soccer games on Sunday afternoons.  The games were played on a field owned by my uncle Martin O'Donnell on the 9th concession line. They were lively gatherings and truly valuable for the morale of the boys, who could get agreeable exercise in this way and show off before the girls.  They were in fact excellent community projects.  Pat McCorkell and Tom Gaughan were outstanding players, and Vince was the star goalkeeper.  That was a "gap that he could mind" to perfection. He never let anything through.

Vince was interested in hobbies of different kinds.  He was fascinated for instance by small firearms which he used to hunt local game, and for target practice.  He sold and bought and traded them just "for the kicks" as they say today.  He did the same with watches. One gun episode is typical.  He got a dozen or more of his pals to help him make maple syrup in Flynn's bush when the sap was running. They dragged a sugar kettle (heavy indeed) a mile or two to a section of the woods remote from the owner's house.  They lit a fire and kept it going for hours on end.  All this in the dead of night, and during the whole time there was the paralyzing fear that Flynn would appear with a police officer perhaps.  Every pressure on the trees by the wind was a possible sign of Flynn's approach.  However they made the syrup and drank their fill.  At this point Vince took the shotgun which he had with him, and going out behind the trees fired it into the air. Everyone thought it was Flynn and fled in every direction.

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It is clear enough that Vince hoped to get away from farm life, as Pete had done.  But he would not even think of going until his brother next in line would be able to take care of the horses and otherwise be, as it were, the crown prince.  This could not be John however.  Though actually the next in line (he was 16 in 1904) he had not developed normally, and would always be a dependent.  I followed next, three years younger than John, and accordingly I was (in the mind of Vince) elected.  When therefore it was decided that I should go to high school, it was an upset.  Could Vince wait.  He was only 18 at the time, but if he were to wait till Ignatius was old enough, it would be a long wait indeed.  He was only 9 at the time. And indeed was there any reason to suppose that Ignatius would choose to be a farmer.  Hence Vince figured that he had no choice but to cut the Gordion Knot.  He spoke honestly and manfully to Dad, and though my father was disappointed he agreed that Vince should go.  There was no question of my dropping out of school to fill the vacancy.  Dad said he would hire a man for a few years at least, and this is what was done.  As time went on Dad saw clearly the drift of' things, and so four years later when I had got off Dad's payroll, that is when I began to support myself as a teacher, Dad did not even ask Ignatius what he wanted to do, but sent him to high school as he had sent me. Had Dad at an earlier date chosen to make farm life more attractive by getting an automobile, and by giving the boys more independence, that is more cash, he might have kept one of them willingly on the farm. But then he could not have sent any of us to high school.  It was not then possible to go by bus to Orillia.  The more expensive method of' living in Orillia was unavoidable.  And there were no jobs for students then.  It was a dilemma for Dad.  It was a dilemma which most farmers faced and failed to solve.

So Vince left home to go to the lumber camp, and in the following spring went to the Twin cities to begin a new career. [Vince shows in the 1909 Minneapolis City Dirctory, page 1016, as being a Molder, a bachelor, living at 3001 SE 4th St.] Before giving any details about it, let me pause to say that none of us has been more attached to his boyhood home, more or even as much as Vince.  Of this he gave proof some years later.  It happened that in the summer of 1926 or 1927 Dad's hired man suddenly left.  It was hard to find a substitute and it was urgent to do so.  To make matters worse my Mother had to undergo abdominal surgery, and Dad was discouraged.  Vince promptly got leave of absence from his job in St. Paul and came home to take charge.  Vince was one who really cared.

And now to go on with Vince in the twin cities.  He took up the moulding trade at first but threatened with inflammatory rheumatism which first touched him in the lumber camp, he entered into his real life work with the Prudential Insurance Co. in which he became one of' their most reliable men.  He married Stella Fahey, who like him had come to the city from a farm to work as a telephone operator, as the Dominic O'Donnell daughters did in Brechin.  Life on a farm has to be subsidized from jobs in the city everywhere.

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The Vince McCorkells made their home at 627 Simpson Street, St. Paul.  (I should like to introduce a parenthesis at this point. The full name of my brother Vince was Patrick Vincent.  It will be recognized that Patrick is a family name, originating at least with our grandfather.)  Vince's home was a hospitable home indeed.  I recall vividly one gathering of McCorkells there from far and near, and it is unforgettable.  Pat McCorkell, my cousin, with his wife Anne, and his sister Madeline motored through the U.S.A. to Western Canada in Aug. 1923.  They picked me up at Chicago where I was taking graduate work at the university to take me to St. Paul where the plan was for Pat's party to spend the weekend with Vince.  When we arrived Pete and Tillie and the kids had already arrived from Superior, 200 miles away.  What a gathering that was.  We had all grown up together in Brechin, but now separated from one another twenty years.  It was a great re-union, and Vince and Stella were in their glory.

Somewhat earlier (1916) Vince and Stella had come to my ordination in Toronto, taking with them their first-born, Estelle, who does not remember a thing about it, for she was less than a year old.  In later years I was to call at St. Paul again and again on my way to visit Basilian houses in the West or in Texas, I contrived to pass through the Twin cities going or returning.  Vince and Stella were ideal hosts, generous with their time and generous in every way.  My first visit to Rome was Stella's gift.  It was postponed several times but took place in 1931.

Estelle, the eldest, has been a sort of guardian angel to her mother, whose health has been uncertain from time to time.  No one could be more unselfish and devoted.  The youngest Rita, died young, but Vince's two sons are very much alive.  Edmund (called Ed) is a college graduate who after serving with the Air Force in the Second World War, took a post with the Braniff Airlines.  He is a big powerful man like his father was but taller.  He built a beautiful house at Shakopee in the lake district outside St. Pau1, designed for all seasons, and he married Alice McDermott of Chicago, who has helped him to make it an ideal home.  They have two children Kevin and Anne Marie.

John McCorkell is like his brother in stature and like him a war veteran. He lives in California, where after experimenting with the trucking business has taken up what might be called his family's profession, serving the public by covering them with Prudential insurance.  His father would be proud of that and also his uncle Pat Fahey, who during his life made an enviable record as an insurance salesman and director with the Prudential Company.  John McCorkell married June Herman and returning to the family tradition has a fairly large family of seven.  They are - Thomas, Karen, Patricia, Steven, David, Julie and James.  John packed them all in a station wagon and drove them over the mountains to his brother Ed's marriage in Chicago where I saw their smiling faces at the end of June 1964. Once, if not twice before that date, he made a similar safari to St. Paul to show his growing family where their father had cavorted about

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as a boy.  St. Paul indeed is a kind of Mecca, not only for the McCorkells born there, but for their relatives many of them, especially the younger generation, who have been lucky enough to test the hospitality of the old home on Simpson Street.  Vince McCorkell died on January 18. 1957.  He was always a fervent Catholic.  At the funeral the pastor, Father Casey, told me that Vince was the best parishioner he had.

Leaving the role of Patrick Vincent McCorkell to history let us resume the story of the Joseph McCorkell family with those members who came after Vince in the family roster.  The next one is actually John Augustine McCorkell (note the second name is a family one).  It will be simpler to leave him to be taken with Rosella at the end.  I ask your indulgence also to let me, Edmund Joseph McCorkell, pass, as is done in the roll call of States in an American convention to nominate a president.  The next one therefore is Ignatius.

(h)	Ignatius

James Ignatius Joachim McCorkell - how he loved to pour out these big words with a touch of scorn, ending with explosive laughter. James was of course a family name.  Joachim (which he always deliberately mispronounced with the accent on the second syllable) was the father of the Blessed Virgin.  (Mother's hand was in this choice) and Ignatius, who was the founder of the Jesuits; this later became his every day name under the diminutive form of Nacie; when he grew up his friends called him Mac.

Ignatius followed me in the family register of births (in our bible) by four years.  Another McCorkell by the name of Clarence popped in between but died in infancy.  These four years of difference brought it about that Ignatius followed me at high school, but we were not there together.  It was Dad's plan, nevertheless, that we should get the same length of years at his expense before going on our own. By that time he had given up all hope that any of his boys would stay on the farm.  Ignatius and I had accordingly three years in academic studies at Orillia, and one year in teachers training, which I took at Toronto and he at Peterborough.  The difference was significant.  I got the break of teaching at St. Michael's high school in Toronto and went on directly for my university degree.  I had hoped he would follow in "the same line" but it was not to be.  His teaching began at Atherley, and World War I interrupted it, and changed our family history.  But that is another story.

Ignatius did his turn helping on the farm before going to high school in 1908, and at intervals during holidays.  He was strongly built and had a practical turn of mind.  He could handle a team of horses, even a spirited one, better than any of his brothers had ever done.  He had the natural expertise and the courage which made up for his lack of experience - I think he was absolutely fearless.  He climbed trees recklessly as a boy - once he fell and broke his leg.  Once a horse kicked him, shattering the surface bony structure at the base of his skull.

22

He outfaced not only the ram but also the gander, my own bete noire in the years when it was said of me that I couldn't "mind a gap".

Ignatius had a delightful sense of humor, much more than any of the rest of us, except. Vince.  I remember very clearly one example of it out of many.  He was taking a week off from high school to help Dad finish the Spring seeding, when I was a Basilian novice (1912) in Toronto, and was expected to be pious and devout.  I wrote home to somebody to say that the novices (myself anyhow) were praying for rain. I had to say something and it was mere routine to mention rain.  But unfortunately they didn't want rain.  It was just before Ascension Thursday, and there was an old superstition that if it rained on Ascension Thursday it would rain for forty days.  Whoever invented that saying must has been reading about the flood in the Old Testament, where it seems there was rain for 40 days and 40 nights.  Anyhow it did happen to rain on Ascension Thursday at Brechin and at Toronto and perhaps all over, and believe it or not it kept it up for days.  I never thought of connecting it with my prayers until I got a letter from Ignatius which began abruptly "For God's sake stop the prayers".  I understood later that my Dad had to sow all the grain over again when the fields dried up.  I had been helpful indeed.

Ignatius became an officer in the 182nd battalion, centered at Oshawa, soon after Canada entered the war.  He was probably the finest looking officer in uniform, but this did not make the war popular with the rank and file of the people at Brechin.  An incident worthy of Belfast initiated by a stupid officer in charge of the recruiting depot at Brechin stirred feelings to a fever pitch.  The authorities removed the officer, and drafted Ignatius to take his place.  It was not war but diplomacy that he was pitchforked into, but he did succeed in easing the situation, though it was a distasteful task.  He nevertheless liked Brechin because it was near Beaverton.  There he had already met one who was to make a big difference in his life.  It was Cecilia (Toots) Proctor, the only daughter of George Proctor, a prominent citizen of the town and a Conservative, who had formerly been a candidate for Parliament. He had also been a friend of my father's.  They were fellow Conservatives and blood brothers in politics.

Cecilia Proctor had been educated at St. Hilda's College in Toronto. She was a beautiful and accomplished girl, and all told an admirable partner for the professional man that Ignatius hoped to become when the guns of war became silent again.  I met her only on the eve of my departure for Washington to begin graduate studies after my ordination two months earlier.  I was quite impressed by her, and happy for my brother. They were married in St. Clare's church in Toronto several months later and went to Quebec City for a honeymoon.  Returning from Washington for Christmas holidays I joined them at the Proctor home in Beaverton and at the McCorkell home in Brechin for happy family gatherings, after which they returned to battalion headquarters at Oshawa and I to Washington. It was my last meeting with Ignatius.

23

In April 1917 he was called overseas with reinforcements for the 116th battalion, the first military unit to draw recruits from the Brechin and Beaverton areas.  Kept in England for nearly a year training raw soldiers for combat duty, for which his experience as a teacher qualified him, he was at pains to relieve his boredom by regular leaves of absence to visit places of interest in the British Isles.  During one of these leaves he went to Dublin where he had a mild bout with the flu and went to a hospital.  His name in the paper as a patient caught the eye of a family by the name of McCorkell, one of whom went to see him.  This was the beginning of a warm friend-ship which lasted for the rest of his life and which I have cultivated ever since.  I. myself, visited them in Dublin in 1953, and again in 1969.  We have not been able to establish any family connection.  If names are a clue a blood relationship, a close one at any rate, seems unlikely. Their names, William, George, Charles do not appear in our records at all.

It is of interest, however, to note that they have added one new name to their list.  It is the name Ignatius.  When I visited there (both times) I met two boys of that name.  The father or mother in either case was a McCorkell from this family.  This indicated how deep an impression my brother made upon the McCorkells of Dublin. Morever in one case there is another name common to them and to us. It is the name of a Cistercian abbott in Berryville, Virginia, who belongs to the Dublin family.  I have met him several times.  His name, believe it or not is Ed McCorkell.

Ignatius was a prolific letter-writer. Literally hundreds of them found their way across the sea to a variety of people, his dear wife, of course, but to many others too.  They were descriptive of what he had seen in England, of the people he met, chiefly Canadians who had followed him overseas, of everything almost except what his readers would have liked to know, that is to say, about the war. Censorship was too rigid for that.  Even after his military unit left for France in the early Summer for manoeuvres on the spot, letters continued to come, all about non-military matters, then suddenly stopped.

The great advance began on Aug. 8.  By Aug. 12 the Canadian sector of Foch's army had penetrated a distance of 10 or 12 miles.  This was something new.  There was a temporary pause in the evening of that day to straighten out the front line.  In the deepening twilight Ignatius was put in command of a company with orders to drive the enemy out of a small wood in the foreground.  They were too close to the Canadian line for comfort.  It seemed likely they would make a counter attack during the night.  As Ignatius crossed the parapet of one of the trenches the scream of a shell could be heard.  He shouted to his batman to duck. But he was too late in getting down himself.  This the batman himself told me later.  He was a boy from Atherley where Ignatius had taught school.  Isn't it a small world after all?

Prior to his own death in action several weeks later, Captain Ott, fellow-officer and friend of Ignatius wrote Toots McCorkell that he had crawled out in the darkness of night after the battle to see if Mac had been merely wounded and might still be alive.  But this was not the case.  He had given his life for his country.

24

The death of Ignatius was a great shock to the family, especially to his dear wife, who had received so many touching and hopeful letters from him during the year and a half he was abroad.  The sorrow was all the greater when the war ended several months later.  We could not help thinking of what might have been. My brother Vince of St. Paul responded to the tragedy in a positive way.  He wrote to me to say that he was seriously thinking of enlisting in the American Army overseas.  He wanted to do something instead of merely expressing his grief in words.  Mother sorrowed as only a mother can.  My father felt its blow keenly too, but he could not disguise his pride that his youngest son was a man of courage and had done his family a signal honor.

When I first went to Europe after the war (it was in 1931), I motored on from Paris with Father Gerald Phelan of the St. Michael's College staff to the battlefields around Amiens.  At that time I wrote the following in my diary:

"We pushed on to Amiens and then by a detour to Bouchoir, near Roye, where we found the grave of Ignatius, in one of the most beautiful military cemeteries I have ever seen.  It was truly a rose garden with a huge cross and a sword dominating it.  We put a wreath of roses on the grave, took several snapshots, knelt to say two decades of the rosary and studied the inscription on the tombstone.  It reads

"Lieut. J.I.J. McCorkell, 116th Battalion Canadian Infantry
12th August 1918	Age 23
Greater love than this no man hath That he lay down his life for his friends"

Thirteen years have healed many wounds, but sadness still hovered over us like a cloud in those moments.  It was difficult to dispel it.  We then motored a few miles and tried to identify the small woods where he lost his young life, leading his company in a successful attack.  We then hurried back to Amiens, arranged to have a Mass of requiem in the nearest church and started towards Belgium on the famous highway along which "the old contemptible." fought their celebrated rearguard all the way from Mons to the Marne. "

The brave spirit with which Toots faced the cruel loss of the conjugal happiness so early snatched from her won the admiration of all our family, to whom she was a complete stranger at the beginning. In the spirit of continuing loyalty to her country, so gallantly given by her beloved husband, she strove to identify herself with some form of public service.  At first she planned to convert the beautiful house which she inherited from her father into a nursing home, and to this end she entered into training for a nurse in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, in which city her aunt lived.  The project however called for more reserve energy than she could muster and so she had finally to settle for less ambitious but nevertheless truly Christian ways of doing good to others.  World War II stirred her to more specifically patriotic work; and she took a job in a munitions factory.  Since that time she has lived quietly at her Beaverton home.

25
(i)	Philomena

The youngest in the Joseph McCorkell family was born in 1897, and baptized under the names of Ethel Philomena.  She was loved deeply by her brothers and sisters as the youngest often is.  A group picture of the children, at our country school, taken in 1902 shows her along with her brothers, cousins and others to the number of 40 in all.  She was then 5years old, and had probably anticipated her actual start at school, prompted by Rosella.  Ignatius and I can be found in the group, both with new caps, his all but concealing his face.  The picture taking was evidently announced well in advance.  Happily it enables us to see ourselves as we once were.  No one will deny that Phil in her blonde curls and white pinafore is the most beautiful child of the group.  Another photo of Ignatius and Phil, taken in a studio, was undoubtedly initiated by Rosella.  The date is 1904 or 1905.  It does not mark any particular even in their lives, but is merely an attempt to preserve the memory of them in their golden youth "forever breathing and forever young".  It is priceless now after nearly seventy years.

Though Ignatius and Phil remained always closer in spirit to each other than to the rest of us, his going away to high school at Orillia made a difference.  Other people were to enter into the lives of each of them and become new friends.  This happened for Phil at St. Joseph's convent in Toronto where she went for her high school studies.  Several of her new girl friends came to have a holiday with her at intervals on my father's farm.  It was good to see Phil create her own personal following as she grew to maturity.  Dad was determined to do for her in the way of schooling what he had done for her brothers.  She was grateful for this chance because she loved studies and the camaraderie of school life.  But it was not to continue to the end.  Before she reached her graduating year Phil had to undergo surgery for appendicitis, and a few months later surgery for adhesions.  I was in Toronto in those days and was depended upon by the family to keep and eye on her in the hospital and to advise her.  A period of convalescence was imperative, and that proved to be the end of her schooling.

After a year or two of uncertainty Phil took the plunge and began her great career as the wife of a young Uptergrove farmer, Hugh McLaughlin, and the mother of 7 girls and 8 boys.  This was a challenge for any father and mother.  Hugh and Phil met it bravely in a Christian manner. They had their ups and downs.  Once their house burned down, and they had to rebuild it.  Once or twice the crops were under average.  But Hugh was a hard worker and a good neighbor.  He was public spirited too, and served on the Township council.  Phil was more or less the balance wheel, keeping everything on an even keel, even if always under pressure, keeping the kids at school, and attending to their religious duties, getting small jobs for the older ones, giving sound advice to her husband on business matters, planning for the next move, and above all getting the family to work together, one helping the other where this was possible.

26

It can truly be said that the one thing they had in abundance was love. I recall one striking evidence of this.  One of the boys, Pat McLaughlin, followed up his graduation from the high school in Orillia by joining the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II. Attached to the coastal command (Demon Squadron) in England in order to scout submarines in the Atlantic, he was shot down over the Bay of Biscay and never found.  The harrowing uncertainty of his fate when he was reported missing, followed by the gradual realization that he would never return was a long drawn out agony for the family. They sought relief in the hope that Pat's two brothers. Joseph and Edmund, also with the Canadian Armed Forces, would return safely, but this hope was only partially realized.  Both did, in fact, return, but Edmund so shaken in health that he died in a military hospital in Toronto two years later.  What touched the neighbors and friends deeply was his mother's resolve to wake him in their own home which was really too small for the purpose.  He always came home when he could, she said.  She wanted it that way now.

The surviving members of the McLaughlin family have lived their own lives with the Catholic faith and courage of their father and mother.  They have made good to an extraordinary degree.  Many have been able to improve their education, which is after all, a lifetime business.  All who chose to marry have found excellent life partners. and have many children.  I can attribute it only to the blessing of God upon the family for the sake of the originating parents, whom He first loved before they began to love Him.

I cannot, however, pass up the chance of saying a word or two about each of them, at the risk of unevenness and of a jerky style like that of a dictionary, in which the subject changes abruptly and often.  May I begin with those whom I met oftener, and usually on some rung of the educational ladder: Kathleen is, I think, about the middle of the line-up - a good person to begin with.  She is a registered nurse, having trained in St. Michael's Hospital.  She married Joe McBride, a graduate of St. Michael's College and a successful lawyer in the city.  They have a family of 6, and live in Etobicoke overlooking a spacious golf course, which is a break for their athletic children.    John:  Following several years at St. Michael's. John topped off his education with an excellent course of 4 years at Ryerson Polytechnic in Toronto.  He teaches technical training and is technical director at Erindale College.  Married Barbara Farrell of Beaverton (also a reg. nurse) they have 5 children and live in Brampton.  Charles: After several years at St. Michael's Charles withdrew to try out various jobs in many parts of the country including the DEW line. Finally met at Edmonton an attractive young widow, Bernice, with two handsome children, who finally pinned him down.  They motored all the way to Toronto on a postponed honeymoon in November and were greeted by the McLaughlin family at the Dymond home in Toronto - an affectionate welcome for a new member of the family.  All are happy for Charles. He has a pleasing personality and deserves to be happy.

27

Teresa (Terry) married Al Schnurr, who presides over the Texaco empire in the Parry Sound area and has 5 sons to keep the business humming.  One of them, Peter, is already married to Emerald Chamberlain and there is now a grandson.    Gladys married Bill Dymond. executive director of Lockwood Survey Corp.  They live in Toronto1 have a family of 8, one of whom Pat, by name, has cleared out to make a home of his own with a bride, Barbara.  The Dymonds have a splendid summer home at Honey Harbour - a hospitable one too. Bert - in London- a mechanical genius by nature, engaged in electrical construction.  Mary, his wife, a former teacher, was a most competent man on her father's farm.  Now an ideal housewife and mother.  They have 5 children, the fifth a long expected son, Patrick.    Clare, is I think, the giant of the family.  A builder with industrial construction, and a builder of a family too.  He and Sally have 3 boys already making themselves heard.  I recall that at Sally's wedding in Goderich the pastor's dog kept me at bay.  But it was worth it.  It was a beautiful wedding.  Clare's Dad made one of his characteristic and really good toasts to the bride.  By the way, Clare is short for Clarence, which is a family name in the McCorkell tradition.

Joan married Peter Sullivan, also a St. Michael's College graduate.  An earlier Joan and Peter was a work of fiction by H.G. Wells in the period of World War I.  Our Joan and Peter are real people living a real life, and a creative life too, for they have 5 children, one of whom is already a good hockey player.  Peter Sullivan has been promoted steadily by his company and he is now sales manager of Seal-test Products in the Toronto area.  Joan has been an inspiration to him. Joe the senior son in the Hugh McLaughlin family, is a miner with Inco at Sudbury.  His wife is Bessie, and his son is Kevin.  He, the son, is a minor, but his Dad is a miner.  There is a difference chiefly in the effect upon the family budget.  What a dreadful pun.

Marie the eldest in the family, and unmarried.  A competent employment counsellor in the service of the Canadian government in their Toronto office.  Gets jobs for many!  Also at the service of her brothers and sisters for whom she has been a kind of guardian angel.  She believes in education by travel, and has visited South America and Japan. Rita - also lives at Sudbury.  She lost her beloved husband, Gordon St. Germain, recently by death.  The family of 5 is closely knit. Already the eldest girl, Lynne, is a university graduate and will teach.  The eldest boy, Ricky, has a good basic education and holds a promising job in town.  Helping to balance the books Rita, too, has a job.  She will make all her flock go-getters like herself for the things of true value in life.  May God bless them all.

Eleanor - the youngest girl, is a teacher with a university degree1 and a wealth of experience.  Gave a year without salary to impoverished Catholic schools of central British Columbia, and 2 years under similar conditions in Peru.  She is now principal of an Indian school in northern Manitoba, reached only by air.  Her friends expect to see her at a school in the Toronto area, perhaps a high school before long.  Bravo Eleanor!    Jim - the youngest of the Hugh McLaughlin family, made good with the Canadian National Railway and holds a responsible job at Capreol, where the Montreal and Toronto supertrains meet. Married Joan Heitzner, a registered nurse, and has a spirited family of 4.  Joan has been an inspiration to Jim, but I expect that such is true of all the McLaughlin wives in their respective households.

28
Rosella

We are now nearing the end of what is to me the central part of the McCorkell saga, viz the names and plays of all the players (so to speak) in my father's family.  We have considered all but two of them, Rosella and myself.  (I leave out of consideration John for the moment) I have left these two to the end because I am following the order in which the members of our family left home to make their own separate careers, and in a very real sense neither Rosella nor I ever left home.  As to myself a priest does not really leave home.  The Church provides for him, but he has no home of his very own.  The closest to it is the home in which he was born, and that is close indeed.  After the death of his parents his home continues in the memories and affection of those who grew up together.  But more of that later.  Now as to Rosella. She was the second among three girls, who started the procession in our family, followed by six boys, and finally a fourth girl.  The distribution was clearly such that the older girls were approaching maturity when the boys were entering the boisterous teen-age period.  Sarah, Rosella and May were therefore of great assistance to my mother in governing the household, and even permitting Mother to help my father in the fields.  I believe she used to ride the binder.  When however Sarah and May were married in 1900, Rosella was elected by the logic of events to become the old reliable.  Prospects of marriage for her had to be postponed.

I have the most invincible faith that Divine Providence guided our family at every stage in its ups and downs, it successes and its failures, but humanly speaking it was Rosella, who in the comings and goings of the others kept the home fires burning.  She held the family together in spirit.  Mother was a chronic invalid for many years.  Most of us were too young to appreciate what a trial for my father her repeated illnesses really were.  It is true even as an invalid her influence in the background was a steadying one on the family, but granting all that it is nevertheless true that her inactivity (she was six years in bed) left my father a rather lonely man.  It was Rosella's unfailing devotion that, so to speak, filled the vacuum.  Upon her devolved the task of keeping in touch with those of us who were away at school, and of giving us a warm welcome, in which Dad always joined, when we came back to a clean, tidy and attractive home at Christmas or on other holidays.

My Mother's health fortunately improved around 1910.  A really good doctor (Galloway of Beaverton) appeared on the scene and got results. This more or less complete recovery continued.  In the meantime Philomena had grown up, had made several attempts to renew her schooling, interrupted by illnesses, and had returned home to say.  Rosella then felt free to marry.  Her husband was Edward Gettings, an Uptergrove farmer, and a widower without children.  This was in July 1913.  Sad to say he died suddenly of pneumonia less than three years later, leaving Rosella with two small children, Philomena and Edward.  Rosella had no other choice than to lease her husband's farm to a tenant, Matt Gonter, and return with her two children to the old home with her parents.  She could take care of her own children there, and at the same time look after her father and mother was well as John, her brother, who had always lived at home as a ward of the family.

29

Mother died on February 28, 1928, and my father on March 26, 1933. He had always been more robust that my Mother, but failed rapidly during his last year.  At 79 years of age he finished his earthly career. On the whole he had been a silent man, unlike his own brother John who was interested in politics, and had been reeve of Mara once.  My father, it must be admitted, was a kind of maverick in politics.  The family tradition had been loyalty to Laurier, the Liberal Prime Minister in the first decade of the twentieth century, doubtless by reason of religion.  My father appears to have broken with this tradition and became a staunch Conservative.  The Orangemen of our country village, 6 miles north of Brechin and exactly 2 miles from our farm were very partial to Dad, even when they came to know that one of his sons was studying for the priesthood.  Of course they also knew that another one of his sons had given his life for his country, and that made a difference with them.  It counted for much, in fact.  But forty years later I discovered another reason for their partiality.  It grew out of an event which I saw with my own eyes.  The barn of one of our neighbors was struck by lightning and burned to the ground in early summer with almost all the year's crop in it.  It was a total loss, and there was no insurance.  Christian charity was, however, not dead in that area. The man whose barn was burned was Protest and an Orangeman.  His friends and neighbors at once set out to make up the loss by a public subscription.  It was considered good policy to approach the nearest neighbor first.  That was my father.  That is what they did, and even they were surprised when my father gave one hundred dollars, a large sum for that time.  Fortified by this pace-setting donation they were able to extract the same sum from nearly every Orangeman in the area. It was more than forty years later that I found out what my father had done. Nor did any of our family know.  Surely the Scripture was fulfilled: 'Let not your right hand know what your left hand does." (Matt.II-3)

When my father died in 1933 Rosella returned to the Gettings farm at Uptergrove with her two children.  She took also with her John, her own brother, and looked after him until some years later a place was found for him in the House of Providence.  This was a very great relief for Rosella, since he was becoming increasingly difficult to control.  In earlier years as we grew up on the McCorkell farm, John was a reasonably good worker.  He was slow at school, and in fact made no progress, but he was useful and co-operative.  I remember one summer, perhaps 1907, when John and I took in all the grain crop of oats and barley, and even the hay (a heavier job) with Ignatius as man who built the load on the wagon and drove the team.  If Dad could have kept the three of us at that work every summer he would not need to hire anybody. But only John remained attached to the farm.  As years went on he became less reliable.  He rambled all over the area, and his health deteriorated. Rosella has earned a lot of marks for her charity to him.  Eventually the old age pension was sufficient to take him off her hands.  He died in Providence Villa, Toronto, on March 21, 1968.  I often wonder if the entire family and indeed every member of it has not gained spiritually in a variety of ways by the accident of our association with John.  He in some ways was a reproach to our pride.  Perhaps we needed it.  The day of judgment will clear up a lot of things.

30
In the meantime, Rosella's daughter, Phil Gettings, began her high school course in St. Joseph's Convent, Lindsay, where she continued for 5 years, l928-33.  After that she devoted a year to teacher-training in the Peterborough Normal School.  Her brother Eddie spent several years at St. Michael's College in Toronto, probably 1931-33.  It was then that Rosella moved back to the Gettings farm at Uptergrove and Eddie discontinued college to help his mother.  In the course of time Eddie took over the management of the farm and converted it into a first-class dairy farm with greatly enlarged acreage and new buildings, stock and equipment.  He married Annette Duffy, a registered nurse, with farm experience.  Besides being the mother of two children, Cathy now in high school and Edward about to start, Annette has been a great helpmate to her husband.  Together they have worked to build for the future.  And not for themselves only. They are public-spirited, Eddie served on the high school board, Annette was president of the local chapter of the Catholic Women's League.  They are a joy to the pastor by their co-operation.

Their ideas of building for the future have changed recently. They have come to think that the running of an up-to-date dairy farm when help is in short supply and very uncertain tends to become a sort of slavery.  Accordingly they have recently sold the dairy farm, and built an attractive house on a suitable site in that area.  They wi1l solve ensuing problems as they meet them.  In the meantime their home will be a nice place to visit.

Phil Gettings has taught school at Penetang, Phelpston, and finally for a longer stretch of years in Toronto, with a break of an exchange year in Edmonton (1948-49) after which she visited the West coast and the deep South.  Phil relieved tensions of school discipline by driving golf balls down a fairway and keeping out of the rough, as well as by occasional safaris to Bermuda and the Caribbean.  Her final school years were given to library supervision, but she loved best of all the role of teacher.  Indeed she finally married a teacher of many-sided interests and skills, Olaf Ulrichsen, co-ordinator of technical education in Peel County.  They live in an attractive home in Peel Village at Brampton.
(k) Edmund

I have inevitably written a lot about myself whilst giving the history of the others in Part II.  I may also add that I shall write still more about myself when I enter into the writing of my Memoirs proper.  So far what I have done is a mere prelude.  The memoirs themselves will be intended for my own Community in the main, and will cover my later studies, and my life-work as a Basilian.  There will be no reason to discourage anyone from reading these recollections except that they are not likely to be of interest to non-Basilians.  They may in fact be dull reading.

However, a few reflections on my early years in the bosom of my immediate family, and a few relevant biographical facts will not be out of place as I bring the narrative of Part I to a close.  My father's farm - originally my grandfather's, was undoubtedly more remote from the busy life of men than it is today.  It was then without automobile, television, radio, telephone and even a regular newspaper, whereas today that same farm can boast of frontage on the Trans-Canada highway, and of contact with the outside world by all the mass media and means of travel.

31

But the farm is no longer in the name of the family, and though there are a few close relatives there is absolutely no one in the entire Township of Mara who bears the name McCorkell.  The visitor has to look on tombstones or memorial windows to find it.  One is therefore inclined to ask if the whole episode that I have been writing about is not some unsubstantial dream with nothing left of it.

The answer I can give and do give is that the memory of it at least lingers, and that is something precious and enduring.  There remains too the record of the members of the family of earlier years who served God and country in dozens of places across the continent. Did they not take something of value with them on which to build? Truly we had a good Christian home.  Work well organized for all according to ability and strength was the order of the day.  Mother kept a wary eye on the younger kids, and even in her illnesses was instinctively aware of what mischief we might be at.  Rosella was at least eyes and ears for her when she could not be about herself. Dad could be counted on to do some spanking when it was needed.  Even my older brothers were not averse to keeping me in my place.  On one occasion I defied my brother Pete, counting on a fence between us, but he took the fence in one bound and before I could develop speed he overtook and spanked me.

That was a passing physical pain.  I recall another pain that is unforgettable utterly.  It was a spiritual pain.  It was the first prodding of my conscience, always a high moment in a boy's life.  It comes surprisingly early in some lives.  I can identify my own experience of it thru a flashback in memory to a time when I was probably three years old.  I had been scouting our extensive orchard for red apples (and therefore ripe ones) and found a tree which was in advance of the others.  Cunningly I resolved to keep it a secret.  My brothers would eat the apples.  But my father, observing my unusual reticence, wormed the secret out of me, and told my mother.  Both were mildly amused at my childlike guile until suddenly Vince, smelling a rat, brought the whole issue out into the open by asking me point blank if I had found red apples.  Thus unexpectedly cornered I lied like a trooper.  At that moment the roof fell in on me.  I can still see my Dad open wide his eyes and raise his eye brows.  I can still hear Mother sputtering incoherently.  In their confusion I became aware of God for the first time.  I could not put into words what had dawned on me, but I realized dimly that I was in contact with a person and he was dreadfully disappointed in me.  I had let him down.

I came to know later that it was the mystery of conscience which I had stumbled upon.  Conscience is the voice of God in the soul in the sense that God prompts us to do (or not to do) certain acts.  We seem in one sense to be doing it ourselves, but we are somehow aware that it is God doing it in us and with us.  That is what makes it right or wrong. To go along with God is to do right, and to be against God is to do wrong.  If we love God there is no doubt which choice we shall make.

32

My days in the country school near home were largely uneventful. One year I lighted the fire in the school stove during the winter months.  I went to the meeting of the ratepayers at the annual meeting of the school section, and bid for the job.  Of course father had pushed me.  My bid of $10. was accepted.  I never got the money, but it was used to buy a coat and other articles of clothing for me.  I did not feel slighted.  I think however it was a mistake to do it that way.  I should have been given a chance to do the buying myself.  That is the way to give a boy a sense of responsibility.

I had Neil Rutherford as a teacher for 6 years.  No one could have been better.  I liked particularly the practice he had of discontinuing classes and letting us listen to him read for nearly an hour at the end of the school day from an interesting book, a novel of Dickens, or Scott, or one of Ralph Connor's works of fiction.  It was possible to do this since it was an ungraded school.  He was a conscientious Protestant, and a loyal British.  I suppose he taught me patriotism. He also taught a sense of discipline.

George Mundie was a classmate of mine in this country school.  Sixty years later at Vancouver, B.C. he gave me an enlarged picture of the kids of that school as a group with Rutherford in the background.  I cannot identify more than half of them today. The McCorkells, Mundies McGowans, and O'Donnells dominate the group.  The picture is simply priceless.

I loved those early years at school.  I only played hookey once. Rutherford overlooked it and that made me feel mean.  I was under the influence of Mike Lavelle in dropping out that particular time.  We merely sat on the gate posts at the Lavelle gate and did nothing.  It was near the end of June and the Orangemen of Udney were preparing for the 12th of July celebration - every evening we could hear the drums beating. As we sat on the gate posts a man drove by with horse and buggy.  He knew us and we knew him.  He was an Orangeman, but a good friend of my father's.  However, we young truants plotted to taunt him as he passed. He had just said "Good day, boys" when we exclaimed "to hell with King Billy".  He looked surprised, but with the retort "To hell with the Pope" he drove on laughing heartily.

I wrote and passed the Entrance in 1902.  I had at the time only a mild interest in studies however. Under a new teacher who was less effective than Rutherford I made little progress.  He taught us soccer however and played with us.  Athletic games are good for boys.  I wrote a government examination under his direction at this time.  It was about grade IX.  I failed, and that was good for me.  It was perhaps my first inkling that life was not a bed of roses.  I had little interest in going to high school.  No one ever did in our area.  It meant living in Orillia since there was no bus to take students from the farms.  Living in Orillia cost money.  I had heard about St. Michael's College, but Dad thought it was too expensive.  However when I repeated the government examination in l903 and passed it, Dad decided to send me to high school.

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He took me there at the beginning of September and persuaded Principal Dickson to try me in second year.  I had the advantage of being ahead of that class in Mathematics, English and History, but very much behind in Latin and French.   I was lost for the fall term but gradually caught up and went into third year in regular time.  Finally I went into fourth year or Upper School and cleared the entrance to the College of Education in 1907.

There were advantages in going to high school in Orillia.  It was a good experience for me to know something about public education before beginning my career in schools under a Catholic system.  It was valuable to me also to meet in my Orillia classes certain students whose friendships were invaluable to me in later years.  There was Frank O'Leary, who became a war hero and later a prominent physician in St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.  There was likewise Ross Sheppard who eventually became superintendent of schools in Edmonton, Alberta.

Sheppard and I had been the closest of friends in our final year at Orillia.  He was a star athlete, and was later to become a member of the Canadian Olympic team at Paris.  It is little wonder that he was the idol of the boys at Orillia.  My friendship with him opened up more than one door of opportunity for me, notably the prestigious office of president of the literary society, which he side-stepped himself in order to make me his candidate.  I did not ever think of the possibility of his withdrawing in my favor, much less ask him to do so.  He simply saw that my religion would be a big handicap in the campaign for office, and his sense of justice prompted him to counteract it by throwing into the scales the full weight of his own popularity.   Curiously enough we drifted apart after leaving Orillia. We naturally enrolled in different colleges at the University of Toronto (He was not a Catholic) and we saw nothing of each other till our common graduation in 1911.  He then told me that he was going to Berkeley on a scholarship for the study of astronomy.  That sounded like a breaking of contact forever, and so that thought of him never again crossed my mind until forty years later I saw the name prominently displayed on the facade of a truly magnificent school in Edmonton. A telephone call brought us together again for an evening of reminiscence, and we repeated that reunion annually until his death five years later.  He was one of the noblest men I ever knew, and is often in my prayers.

As stated earlier, I went to the College of Education in 1907-08. It was my first year in the big city, though not one quarter what it is today in size.  I lived at the home of Mrs. 0'Malley on Spadina Avenue.  She was a family connection by marriage, being the sister of my step grandfather Pat Mangan.  One of her daughters was also a student at the College of Education.  It was Irene O'Malley, who has since become a Sister of St. Joseph and a top flight college teacher for many years.  The O'Malley home was in St. Basil's Parish and in going to Mass I had my first contact with St. Michael's College.

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The course of studies I was taking prepared me to teach at any level up to and including junior college.  I had realized for some time that this would be my last year on my father's payroll, as it were.  He made that clear.  I knew that he had to do something for Ignatius, and later for Philomena, the youngest in our family.  So I looked forward to teaching in order to support any future plans I might make. Towards the end of that year of teacher-in-training, I toyed with the idea of getting a school in the Canadian West.  The same romantic yearning for the wider world that had drawn Pete and Vince to the middle West was making itself felt in my soul too.  But I knew Jack Sheridan of Brechin and Jack Perry of Orillia at St. Michael's College, and I naturally called to see them, merely out of friendship.  One of them introduced me to the Superior of St. Michael's College, Father Nicholas Roche, C.S.B., an outstanding personality   When he got the story of my background and of my hopes he knew that I was the person he wanted for the staff of the High School at St. Michael's College.  So at his suggestion I decided against the West.  It is interesting to speculate what might have been my future if I had gone to a school in Saskatchewan or Alberta.

At St. Michael's I was able to teach in the high school section of the larger institution which is known as St. Michael's College, and which is an integral part of the University of Toronto.  The high school and College classes being in the same building I was able to double up, as it were, and take my university course, whilst committed to a program of high school teaching.  I had to restrict my choice of university subjects somewhat in order to have time to give to teaching, but on the other hand I was able to save three years all told, and to begin studies immediately preparatory to the priesthood as early as 1911.  Any deficiency in my background due to my preoccupation with teaching was amply made up in graduate studies after my ordination.

It is therefore clear that Divine Providence was directing my life from an early period.  I had hoped from the beginning to become a priest and never completely abandoned it even when the way seemed blocked, or when some alternative choice of a calling made more than a passing appeal to me.  Prepared ultimately to earn my way by teaching, St. Michael's College afforded me the opportunity on terms I could manage, and at that point no alternative choice made any sense.

	All my school years were happy years, once I had made a start. I would not wish to have missed my Orillia years, but still less would I wish to have missed my university years at St. Michael's College.  It was there that my vocation to the priesthood became more clearly defined as a vocation to religious life in the Community of St. Basil.