Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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LOYOLA COLLEGE Page 6 REVIEW REVEREND THOMAS J. MacMAHON, $.J. : F ATHER MacMAHON was born in Hamilton in 1874, the son of a prominent member of the police force. After graduating from Hamilton Col- legiate, young MacMahon was articled as a law clerk to the firm of Lynch, Staunton and O'Heir. At this time he also took part in the discussions of a Catholic Debating Society and gave promise of great things as a speaker. In 1894 Mr. MacMahon went to Montreal to teach English in a French Canadian College and there learn French. He did not like this position, however, and after two weeks went over to St. Mary's College. Shortly after arriving at St. Mary's he made the momentous retreat which made the budding lawyer decide that his vocation was not to the bar but to the priesthood and to the Jesuits. When Thomas MacMahon entered the Novitiate at Sault-au-Recollet, he was the first English- speaking subject in two years. As a novice he was much liked, showing then the characteristic for which he was to be noted throughout his life of being an excellent community man. In 1897 he was sent to the Missouri Province for a two-year study of the classics. Returning to Montreal, he spent seven years of conscientious study at the Immaculate Conception College, with six years of teaching at Loyola between his Philosophy and Theology. Father MacMahon was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Bruchesi wd 815%, 1910, and in 1911-12 made his tertianship in Canterbury, England. The early part of the following year he ably assisted Father Alex. Gagnieur, then Rector of Loyola, as Minister and Prefect of Studies and Discipline. When Father Gagnieur fell ill about the middle of the year Father MacMahon succeeded him as Rector. It was during the last year of his term as Rector that Loyola moved from Drummond Street to the present location in Notre Dame de Grace. Work had been begun two years before, and in 1916 the entire student body moved to Sherbrooke Street West. In Father MacMahon's second term as Rector, 1930-1935, he had the beautiful chapel building erected. The present Loyola may be considered almost entirely as a monument to his administration. The rest of the years that Father MacMahon devoted to the priestly ministry were spent on the Mission Band. During these years he gave very many missions in all parts of Canada and preached retreats to priests, religious, and laymen in this country and in the United States. He was extremely well-liked as he was a noble character, inaccessible to much of the petti- ness of human nature, unacquainted with selfishness and ambition and a complete stranger even to vanity and self-complacency. He was a fine manly man, a good religious who led a life of great singleness of purpose and unflinching devotion to duty. His fidelity to regular observance was ап inspiring example. On the social side he left the memory of sunny ways and witty sayings. Everywhere he passed he was remembered as an excellent community man. NI

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LOYOLA Page 5 COLLEGE REVIEW SGT. FABIAN RICHARD DAWSON, ‘47 ABIAN RICHARD DAWSON was born on April 15, 1924. At 2.38 p.m. on the 28rd of April last he lost his life during flying operations ten miles Southwest of the Hamlet of Harrogate in Yorkshire, England, and was buried four days later in the morning in the R.A.F. regional Cemetery at Harrogate. Between the lines of this stern official epitaph granted him by the Air Force a wealth of memories must linger for those who knew him. In the spring of 1938 Richie Dawson entered First High and caught almost at once the Loyola spirit. The Review of '39 tells us that “his achievements in Bantam Football and Hockey are surpassed only by his Monday morning smile.” He never lost that smile. Nor did he lose the spirit when he left Loyola to offer his services and eventually his life for the principle that men are created free and equal and must remain so, for he was among the top ten in a class of 400 to graduate from Mont Joli Gunnery School. Above all he was a real Catholic—what greater epitaph could be pronounced. In one of his last letters he told of serving Mass and receiving Holy Communion on Easter Sunday and confided to Phil Ready, his life- long friend, that his one hope was that God would take him in the state of sanctifying ке Our hearts go out in sympathy to the Dawson family for we know full well what a loss is theirs. RIP. y y 7 ALBERT PICOTTE ous PICOTTE was with us a bare two years before God called him, but in that short space of time he had endeared himself to the College, and in particular to the class with which he was to have graduated this year—an endearment and a friendship which these few words will be very inadequate to express. And it is hard to write these words about one who was so close to us all at every class and in every activity at Loyola. He came to us from the Collége de Montréal where he had been from the age of twelve, and which he left with the highest academic distinctions in 1942. His classmates, both past and present, can testify to the keenness of his mind and the quickness of his wit. But that is not what we will remember in particular about him. It is his good humour and never-failing smile, his readiness to help, and work with others; well he knew that truth, “un saint triste est un triste saint , and we all have much to learn from him. He died on May 16th, just nine days short of his twenty-first birthday, and the Solemn Requiem High Mass was offered on the 19th by Fr. Rector, assisted by two a his professors, and served by four of his class-mates. We can be sure that he is now at rest; as one was heard to say, he was so happy that he must have had a premonition of his death. We will miss him on Convocation night, and our hearts will be heavy as his name is called. But then we forget. He was called before us, and he was ready. He has aliit graduated in the final Convocation—the only one that really counts,—and he will be looking down on us. R.I.P.

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LOYOLA Page 7 COLLEGE REVIEW REVEREND FRANCIS WAFER DOYLE, $.J. b. his four years’ teaching before theology Fr. Doyle had seen Loyola begun at St. Mary’s College, move to larger quarters at the south-east corner of Bleury and St. Catherine, and then, after a disastrous fire, move again to Drummond Street, the present site of Lasalle Hotel. After his ordination he returned to Loyola as Prefect of Discipline and Minister. From 1908 to 1912 he was stationed at St. Mary’s College, preaching and hearing confessions in the Gesu and teaching English in the classroom. In Se tember, 1912, he was appointed pastor of the Church of Our Lady, Guelph. For this parish he spent his talents. His friendly nature, his organizing ability, his wit and eloquence, his generosity, all were used to the utmost to further the interests of the people and their church. His kindly spirit, wise counsel and generosity were keenly appreciated, too, by the Fathers and novices at St. Stanislaus Novitiate, started a year after Fr. Doyle’s arrival at Guelph. On the establishment of the Jesuit Seminary eighteen years after his appointment as pastor he became its first rector, a position he held until 1934. For the past ten years, although in fail- ing health, he has been spiritual director of Regiopolis College, Kingston. From the June issue of Regiopolis’ “Garnet and Gold”, we take the following as an example of the interest he kept in his charges, especially the young: “His death was not a shock to us, for he told many of us after we had gone to confession to him on the Saturday evening previously that he was hearing our confessions for the last time. He had dropped many hints and often jokingly remarked that he had lived quite long enough, that eighty-two was perhaps an over-ripe old age. So he had prepared us for his going. His death was a disappointment and a loss. For in him the students lost a friend whose kindness and patience were remarkable. We used to wonder how he sat in his room all day long without showing signs of irritation and discouragement. His unruffled and cheerful manner always charmed us. In him we lost a counsellor whose advice most of us eagerly sought in all our big difficulties. We found him willing to hear our stories and earnest in offering us solutions to our problems. We are lonely without him. R.I.P. Сс