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| Imagining the Unimaginable . Making Dreams Come True | ||
| Alumni Profile: Mr. Rock'n'roll.com . Impossible to Say No | ||
Remembering McDonough BY SUSAN MCCANN, LBA 69 Father McDonough was my father. I figured that out only long after I first met him at Loyola. I knew he was my math teacher, dean of students, priest, mentor and friend. But it was only when we started the last goodbyes in the late nineties that I began to admit the signs — swallowing the tears, lump in the throat, fears that every time we visited might be the last. Long before November 1, 1999, the day he passed away, I started feeling how much it would hurt when Gerry McDonough died. Montreal, 1965: Everything about mid-sixties Loyola College was thrilling. I arrived in Montreal from Quebec City, 16 years old and excited about starting my Jesuit education. One of the first people I met was Father Gerard McDonough, S.J., a balding, chain-smoking whirling dervish in a black cassock. He looked old to my young eyes. So I made a bet with a friend: "Father McDonough’s 60 if he’s a day!" His small office at the centre of campus is where I first got to know him: helping him find his glasses, brushing the dandruff off his shoulders. One day, he called me in. Word had gotten to him about the bet I’d made. "Sue McGarbagecan" — he loved to play with people’s names — "you not only lost your five dollars, you just lost your best friend!" He thought that was uproarious — he was 40 at the time — and enjoyed watching me squirm. Maybe our friendship actually began that day. Gerard McDonough had an irresistible personality. He was a central figure at Loyola during an exuberant time. Social justice was taking form, and Gerry McDonough waded in. It was he who defined the position "Dean of Students" from 1963 to 1969. At noon each day, when he would dash off to the Loyola Chapel to say mass, he became again what he really was, a priest. It was to fulfil that vocation that Father McDonough requested permission to leave Loyola, to begin nearly 30 years of involvement with the poor of India. Bombay, 1987: I caught up with Father McDonough in Bombay in 1987, where he was setting up slum schools. He said, "Sue McGarbagecan, you can stay here and run the show. But I have to go back to Toronto to look after my ticker." I was crushed because I came to work with him, but I stayed. Before he left, he would say mass everyday at his kitchen table. We would discuss the gospel and share bread and wine as the steamy heat and the sounds of Bombay blew in through the windows.
Pickering, 1997: During Father McDonough’s third bypass surgery, in the mid-nineties, he had a stroke and went into a coma. Doctors hinted at funeral arrangements. After 40 days, he woke up. Typical. The last leg of his journey was just beginning. He went into the Jesuit infirmary in Pickering. And there he rebelled. He couldn’t accept not being active. But now the firebrand was weakening. And I loved him more than ever, for the corny jokes he still cracked, for the passion and anger that he could summon in a flash. He made no bones about his faults. While he easily bent, he didn’t bow to pressures from anybody — governments, superiors, the Pope. The words of Matthew 25 had taken hold of his soul: "I was hungry and you gave me to eat . . . I was naked and you clothed me. . . ." These words, read at his funeral, had inspired him to be a Jesuit — "a man for others" — and had carried him to Bangladesh, Darjeeling, Bombay and Calcutta. They rang out now, a triumphant message. I had had plenty of warning that this day was coming, but who’s ever ready to say goodbye to their father? The Loyola Alumni Association invites you to a memorial mass for Father McDonough on September 14, 7:00 p.m., at the Loyola Chapel. Are you interested in contributing an editorial for the magazine? Contact Howard Bokser, (514) 848-4856, howardb@alcor.concordia.ca |
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He
broke lots of rules in India. He associated with the garbage pickers, sweepers, the
untouchables, and he sent me into Bombay’s red-light district to make contacts for an
idea he had that has now been realized in the northern area of Pune: a school for the
children of prostitutes. He fought against brutal Indian poverty. He had no time for
unjust laws or dogma. He was, as Loyola president Father Malone had said, a warrior for
justice. He was later thrown into a Bombay jail for paying workers in American money, and
subsequently kicked out of India. He never had any doubt about the correctness of his
work, and that included "family planning" in India. He was a pragmatist and a
radical.