Mary Teresa McDonald

Mary Haney always had plenty to do when she was raising her seven rambunctious children in suburban Montreal in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Yet somehow, between managing the never-ending loads of laundry, preparing meals, baking, grocery shopping, and providing plenty of love and support, she found a few minutes each day to play the piano and make a little more progress on a sweater or hat she was knitting for one of her ever-growing offspring. She died peacefully on October 2 at the Bayview long-term care center in Pointe Claire, Quebec. She was 103 years old.

Mary Teresa McDonald was born in 1921 in Chapeau, Quebec, a small logging and lumber village in the middle of the rugged Ottawa River Valley. Mary was the daughter of Wallace and Cora (Desjardins) McDonald. The sixth of ten children, she was the last surviving and longest living of the siblings. Mary’s childhood home was a clearing house of village life since her father owned the general store in Chapeau with his brother-in-law and was the hamlet’s mayor. Wallace McDonald also served as a member of the Quebec Legislative Assembly and, later, was elected to Parliament in Ottawa as the Honourable Member from the riding of Pontiac.

After finishing high school, Mary and her younger sister, Annetta, left Chapeau for nursing school at Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston, Ontario. The sisters graduated in 1945 and returned to Chapeau to care for their ailing father. Following Wallace McDonald’s death in 1946, Mary found work in nearby hospitals before she and Annetta accepted a two-year assignment at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California in 1947. To get there, Mary made her way from Ottawa to Chicago and connected with a driver who was taking passengers for the trip west along legendary Route 66 to Los Angeles. Annetta travelled from Alaska to join her in California.

Mary and Annetta had, by all accounts, a wonderful adventure in the Golden State. Post-World War II Southern California was growing at an incredible pace and occasionally the young nurses found themselves taking care of the stars of Hollywood’s movie-making golden age. They cared for Ronald Reagan, the film star and future U.S. President who had broken his leg in a charity baseball game, as well as actress Oona O’Neill, who was giving birth to her and husband Charlie Chaplin’s third child, Josephine. Their time off included sightseeing in Mexico and boat trips to Catalina Island for a day at the beach.

When her contract in California ended, Mary returned to Canada and found work as a nurse at the Western Division of Montreal General Hospital. About this time, her sister Annetta introduced Mary to her future husband, Daniel Francis (Frank) Haney, a native of Revelstoke, British Columbia and an electrical engineer at the Canadian Pacific Railway’s home office in Montreal. She and Frank were married in Chapeau in 1951 and made their first home in an apartment on Sherbrooke Street across from Loyola College in the west end of Montreal. Children came along quickly, which meant moving to larger homes. The couple settled first in suburban Dorval and then in Beaconsfield in 1958.

These moves to subdivisions, so new that the streets were not yet paved, usually required a busy mother to spend a lot of time driving from here to there in the family station wagon. This was not Mary’s strong suit. Thankfully, suburban life at the time also provided Mary with what today is considered a contemporary e-commerce convenience- home delivery. Milk and dairy products, bread, groceries, department stores, and dry cleaners all came to her door.

By the mid-1970’s, Mary developed a fascination with the Montreal Expos that grew into a passionate avidity with each new baseball season. However, she had little interest in watching the games on television and attended no more than a dozen games in her lifetime. Rather, she followed the fortunes of her team with the funny-coloured hats by listening to the games on the radio, perhaps because she could knit at the same time. And Mary didn’t just tune in to some of the games, but to all of the games; spring training games, day games, night games, double headers, and the late games played in California that often ended in the wee hours of an east coast morning. By the time the Expos relocated to Washington in 2004, Mary had probably listened to well over 4,000 contests.

Meanwhile, Frank’s long and successful time at Canadian Pacific ended with his retirement from the railway in 1984, and he began to work on consulting assignments that occasionally took him to exotic destinations all over the world. Sadly, Mary and Frank’s transition to a life together in retirement ended abruptly with Frank’s sudden and unexpected death in 1986. By then, most of their children had graduated from university and left home. With more free time, Mary filled her days by volunteering at the Mackay Rehabilitation Centre in Montreal, taking classes at Concordia University, reading newspapers and magazines that kept her up to date on current events, and working on countless knitting projects that now focused on her grandchildren.

Mary Haney is survived by her seven children (Daniel, David, Mary Ann, Gregory, Patrick, Carola, Matthew) and their spouses and partners, eleven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.

A celebration of Mary’s life is being planned for mid-November.