Rhoda Catherine Palfrey

Rhoda was born on October 17, 1929, in Mount Stewart, Prince Edward Island, to bank-manager James Ernest Palfrey of Lawrencetown Nova Scotia and Rhoda Higgins Merrick originally of Halifax. She attended public schools in Nova Scotia, graduating from the Windsor Academy in 1947. Following in the footsteps of two of her Palfrey uncles, she attended Mount Allison University, and was graduated in 1950 with an Honours degree in English literature.

Traveling to Japan by ship In the Fall of that year, she began a three-year career as a teacher in the English department of the Eiwa Girls’ High School in Shizuoka, an esteemed educational institution founded in 1887 by women’s organizations of the Methodist (later, United) Church of Canada. These years in a Japan still under U.S.-American occupation were formative for Rhoda’s subsequent life, and when, years later (1989), she returned to Japan with her husband, it was indeed like a home-coming.

Upon returning to Canada in 1953, Rhoda worked for five years with the Student Christian Movement of Canada, first as one of the national secretaries visiting university units of the S.C.M. across the country, and then as ‘Secretary’ of the Dalhousie University unit. She also taught part time at the newly founded Halifax Grammar School for Boys.

In September of 1959, she began graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, enrolling in their ‘History of Ideas’ programme, a course offered jointly by Union, Columbia University, and Jewish Theological Seminary. In May that same year she married fellow-Canadian Douglas John Hall a doctoral student at Union Seminary. In the Fall of that year the Halls went to St Andrew’s United Church in Blind River, Ontario, where Douglas had been appointed minister. The first two children of the couple, Mary Kate and Christopher, were born there in 1961 and 1962. Recognizing the demands and responsibilities of family life, Rhoda withdrew from active involvement in the Columbia/Union program and from that time until her life’s end pursued her academic vocation privately though ardently.

In 1962 the Halls moved to Waterloo, Ontario, when Douglas was installed as the first principal of St Paul’s University College in the new University of Waterloo. Three years later, they moved again to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to take up work at St Andrew’s College in the University of Saskatchewan. Throughout the decade of their residence in Saskatoon (1965-75) significant global developments claimed Rhoda’s attention. It was a period marked by anti-Viet Nam War and Bomarc Missile protests, as well as a new awareness of the rising aspirations of Quebec. Rhoda was active in the foundation of the Saskatoon French School. She gave birth to their two younger daughters, Sara and Lucia, during that period. As lecturer in the Department of Educational Foundations of the University’s College of Education, she introduced aspiring teachers to the critical ideas of Hilda Neatby, Jacques Ellul, George P. Grant and others.

In 1975 the family moved to the city of Montreal, where Douglas had been invited to become Professor of Christian Theology at McGill’s Faculty [now School] of Religious Studies. Rhoda supervised the musical and academic educations of their four teen-aged children, while doing volunteer work with ‘Dialogue’ (a French-English organization at that time under the direction of Rev. John Lee), the N.D.G. Food Bank, and Auberge Madeleine.

Throughout the 1980s and until her husband’s retirement from McGill in 1995, Rhoda was research assistant to Douglas Hall, especially in connection with his three-volume systematic/ ‘contextual’ theology. She accompanied him on several of his guest-lectureships and sabattical leaves and was engaged with him in work for the World Council of Churches and other organizations, as well as being in personal dialogue with Christians and others in Japan, Germany, the United States and Canada.

In recognition of her long service to the ecumenical church and the academy, the Diocesan College of Montreal awarded Rhoda Palfrey Hall an honourary doctorate in Sacred Theology (S.T.D.) at its convocation in the Spring of 2007. Her address on that occasion built on the experience of her ancestors from Dover, England, and was entitled Learning Again to Live Lightly on the Earth.

Rhoda was diagnosed with the Parkinson’s condition in 2005, and while the development of the condition was mercifully slow over the next fifteen years, her energies were much-depleted during the final years of her life, but she never lost her passion for life and remained bright eyed to the end.

She passed away peacefully on March 17th, 2020 surrounded by her husband Douglas, and children Sara and Christopher.

She is deeply mourned by Douglas, her husband of sixty years, her four children -Kate, Christopher, Sara and Lucy and their partners - Jacques, Marie-Claude, Lloyd and Arne, three grand-daughters - Sophia, Rebekka and Anne-Sophie and five grand-sons - Olivier, Kyle, Jakob, Samuel and Daniel ... as well as by many Canadian and international friends.