Skipper the Camp Director
Skipper of Black Bay Camp and later, Marygrove Camp
(1940-1961)
While other teachers took a well-deserved summer break away from multiple children, Mary doubled down for over 20 years.
Mary’s love of the outdoors coupled with the fact that she lived in a one-bedroom apartment with her sister, Dori, might have influenced her decision.
Mary eagerly accepted the offer to create a girls' camp at Black Bay, a job offer from Father Holly, and later after proving her competence, at Marygrove, with a job offer from Monsignor Castex and Father Kelly.
Miss Mary Flynn, the teacher, insisted on being called Skipper at camp.
Every summer, Skipper swapped her brown schoolmarm tweed skirt and sensible rubber- soled shoes for a functional navy pantsuit and hiking boots.
Skip loved every minute being Director of the Black Bay Camp for Girls’ from 1940 to 1951 and Director at Marygrove from 1952 to 1961. As a woman with powerful faith and an unwavering devotion to the Virgin Mary, it was outside where she felt closest to God and all that was Holy. She built a Marian Devotion and would lead the girls in the Rosary every morning before breakfast.
Around her neck hung a land-yard containing the camp’s keys and her whistle. It lay on Mary’s impossibly crisp white blouse. Even on the hottest days, she would wear her double breasted nautical jacket around camp looking like a real skipper!
For both camps, she often recruit campers, counsellors, nurses, her Headquarters management staff and leaders-in-training from those she knew in the Pembroke and the Pontiac region. Mary expertly coached these young women and men to be assertive thus giving them confidence to pursue their life’s dreams.
In the 1940s, young Black Bay campers remember being taught how to write letters home, the importance of including others in their play and wholesome fun jumping off the dock and unsupervised time in the forest.
Rounds of Little Sir Echo were sung around the campfire and echoed back-magic!- by the Mulvihill family huddled around their bonfire across the bay. These are fond memories of many young campers, now in their 80s.
In the 1950s, Marygrove Camp on Georgian Bay was quite a costly camp and attracted Catholic girls from Toronto, Quebec City and Ottawa. Mary designed, staffed and managed the camp each summer, and it grew in popularity. Eventually it became too big for St. Anne’s in Penetanguishene to administer.
In 1961, at 57 years old, after Mary had spent her last 10 summers at Marygrove, she retired. The camp was transferred to the Archdiocese of Toronto to run as a charity for disadvantaged girls and it has remained with that mandate.
Our Skipper was now ready to slow down a bit, though, and spent her summers at her cottage in Westmeath. Twenty years of rushing from the last day of school to camp and to school again were over.
Mary made an enormous impact on so many of the campers, counsellors, nurses and staff. One woman, wrote in her scrapbook, “My whole life changed the day I met Mary Flynn.”
Little Sir Echo and other camp songs where sung around the campfires in Black Bay.
Skipper -half way through her 20 year Camp Directorships. 1950/51
Photo supplied by Kathleen Whelan.
Skipper last year as a camp director:
1961, Marygrove Camp.
Photo supplied by Joan Giroux Roy.
A local write up with Marygrove highlights.
Date and source unknown.
Today at Marygrove Camp this sign hangs behind the office counter.
Photo credit: Louise Coutu.
Mary and Dorothy’s cottage. Circa 1962
Photo supplied by Dianne Flynn.
Mary’s beloved Cathedral School
Mary Flynn taught at Cathedral School in Pembroke, Ontario from September 1927 to June 1966. That is 40 calendar years and 39 school years!
She taught all grades, but liked teaching the nine-year-olds in Grade 4 the most.
I’ve interviewed many past students of Cathedral School during Mary Flynn’s time. I have been fortunate to hear the heartfelt memories of these now 60, 70, 80- and 90-year-olds and to learn about the effect Mary had on them.
Three of Miss Flynn’s former students gave me their Grade 4 report cards! What a treasure to see Mary’s lovely cursive and read her encouraging words!
Many reported their pure pleasure at being read aloud to by Miss Flynn in her engaging storytelling manner. This was a memory I heard over and over along with book titles including The Secret Garden, Huckleberry Finn, Mary Queen of Scots and the Bobbsey Twins. Many folks today accredit her for their lifelong love of reading. What a legacy!
Respecting the disabilities and range of differences between children—be they physical, intellectual or socio-economic was a value of Mary Flynn’s. She taught this by modelling her own attitudes and behaviour. The lesson was not lost on her students, proof being that 50 years later many remember and continue to live by these exact values.
Time and again I heard in conspiratorial whispers, “I felt I had a special place in Miss Flynn’s heart.” Beautiful.
In 1971, Mary retired from the Renfrew County Roman Catholic Separate School Board.
Mid 1970s, Mary and Dorothy, her sister, bought the house across the street from the school at 202 Isabella. I am thinking the sounds of the children playing at recess must have warmed her heart, especially during her dark days after her sister, Dori’s, death in 1975.
After Mary’s death in 1977, a year to the day later, on October 1, 1978, the library at Cathedral School was dedicated to her and named in her honour.
A memory cabinet containing a lifelong collection of awards, medals and citations along with her cookbook, plays and poetry lay honoured. It was a touching display, protected under glass.
What ever happened to the cabinet and its contents? No one knows for sure, but water damage from two school fires may have destroyed some of these items.
Mary Flynn and one of her classes in the 1950s or 1960s. Photo from Tim Houlihan.
Current day photos Cathedral school.
Mary Flynn’s house (current day photo) of 202 Isabella. She lived there from 1975-1977.
A gem of a photo surfaces!
During one of my many memorable research interviews, I heard about a tug-of-war competition that took place on the Colonial Lumber Mill’s yard each pay-day. The reason my interviewee told me about this loud and boisterous activity during the difficult depression years was because she lived across the street, on Nelson Avenue and as a little girl, she would watch the competition with interest. My Great Grandfather (and Mary’s Father), Joseph Flynn, was the mill’s superintendent so he would have had to authorize this pay-day activity, I imagine.
My 98 year-old interviewee recalled Joseph as ‘grumpy old Mr. Flynn’. In 2018, to have interviewed a person who knew my Great Grandfather (1864-1939) was a thrill, but what happened next was even more amazing.
Many months after this interview, I contacted Bruce Pappin, a Pembroke historian and lecturer, to learn about Pembroke during the First World War, The Great Depression and the Second World War. I told him all I knew about Mary and her family during those years, including the tug-of-war competitions.
“I happen to have a photo of a tug-of-war team. My grandfather is in the photo and I found it crammed into a drawer after he died,” he said. “Perhaps your great grandfather is in it too. I’ll send it to you.”
Indeed, Jospeh Flynn is the man in the centre of this photo having presented the cup to the winners!”
Mary Loretto’s father sits in the middle of the winning tug-of-war team. Circa 1930
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Mary's Oak Partner-Desk
Most days, I sit at Mary’s desk to write her story. Poetic, isn’t it?
Thanks to the thoughtfulness of Rita Woollam’s children in the summer of 2019, I was gifted Mary’s antique oak partner desk. It had been willed to their mother and treasured by the family since Mary’s death in 1977. After their mother’s death and before the sale of the family’s house in the summer of 2019, they were sorting through everything and came across the desk.
Knowing I was writing Mary Loretto’s story, they offered it to me. It ‘s a two-person desk and I get goosebumps thinking she is there with me as I write my book.
My office’s centrepiece, Mary’s oak desk. This is the refurbished one-hundred-year-old desk at which I write my book.
Mary Loretto Flynn
circa 1973
A Spinster's Hope Chest
At nineteen I wasn’t at all interested in the contents of the cedar hope chest that arrived one day.
This is a very similar hope chest to the one I received in 1978. It crossed the country by train and was delivered to me in Edmonton, early 1978.
Bad luck, I thought at first!
Receiving a marital hope chest from the estate of my two spinster great aunts did not strike me as exciting. Was it a bad omen, I wondered?
The chest contained the following items from my Great Aunts Mary and Dorothy and sent to me by my grandfather, I assume.
Eight place settings of Royal Albert Petite Point Bone China, matching salt and pepper shakers and several serving dishes.
A three drawer oak chest of 100% sterling silver cutlery including large serving spoons, butter knives and mini tea cup spoons.
A generous number of cotton doilies, embroidered dinner napkins and monogramed ladies’ handkerchiefs.
And other small items such as a fine china Virgin Mary figurine.
Below is a photo of Mary and Dorothy in 1958. The tea cup in the photo is one of the ones I inherited.
In 2005, I moved houses and let go of my cherished cedar hope chest. I didn’t take a picture of it then, as I do now with sentimental items before ‘right-sizing’ but thanks to our amazing internet I found an exact replica.
Warms my heart!
From left to right: Mary Flynn, Father Barry, Dorothy Flynn. Notice my tea cup and saucer on the left! Circa 1958
Hello Rita, Goodbye Cecilia
Two things happened in the 2000s which led to my book idea: I met Rita Hughes in 2005 and in 2009, I went to Pembroke to attend the funeral of her aunt, Cecilia Cotnam.
When I met Rita Hughes in Ottawa, she noticed my name and asked me if I happened to be related to her old teacher and her Aunt’s good friend, Mary Flynn, from Pembroke. Yes, indeed I replied although I told her I had never met the lady.
“She was very important to me” she said and began to tell me all the ways Mary Flynn had touched her life. As our friendship developed over time, Rita shared even more of her memories with me, showed me a card she had received from her- still in pristine condition. A few years later, when her Aunt Cecelia Cotnam died I wanted to attend the funeral to represent my Aunt and drove almost two hours to Pembroke from Ottawa for the funeral.
At the post-funeral reception, I was slowly surrounded by a group of adults and realized it was because they had been told to whom I was related. Stories and remembrances of Mary then began and one fellow, Bruce Pappin I believe, went home to retrieve a copy of the publication below for me. Cathedral School, where Mary had taught for 39 years was profiled in the 50th anniversary booklet.
I think the idea of this book was born the day Cecilia Cotnam was buried.
The Fiftieth Anniversary of the “New” Cathedral School- 130 Years at the Heart of Catholic Education in Pembroke. Produced in May, 2005 by Bruce Pappin.
Who am I to write Mary’s story?
Thirty years ago I moved to Ottawa as a young mother and wife. I didn’t know or care too much about my ancestral connection to the city and only came to know it in later years as I researched city archives for Ordinary Mary.
Mary Loretto’s grandfather, Martin Flynn, is sitting in the middle of the black and white photograph below. He is my great, great Grandfather. Thanks to the spark generated by my grandfather and uncle’s memoirs, the more I heard about my Irish rooted family’s immigration to Ottawa, their beginnings in the lumber industry and the role the Upper Ottawa Valley played, the more astounded and highly curious I became.
Then I began to hear about Mary Loretto from Ottawa people who had been born and raised in Pembroke. Bombarded with stories about her effect on peoples’ lives, I knew I needed to discover who she was. Once I did, I knew what I had to do—share her story with you as well as the surprising unanticipated bonus of finding my own roots, homeland and mentor.
That is why I am writing her story. I hope you enjoy it when it is completed and until then, enjoy the photos and blog posts about Mary’s life and times.
Mary and her beloved sister Dorothy in their last resting place. St. Columba’s Cemetery in Pembroke, Ontario, Canada. Note: Mary’s birth year is in error. She was born in 1904.
