Rossbrook House nuns to receive Order of Canada

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This article was published 29/06/2022 (1426 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Roman Catholic Sisters Bernadette O’Reilly and Margaret Hughes will receive one of Canada’s highest honours after spending decades helping children and youth at Rossbrook House.

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon announced Wednesday the pair will join 69 others to be inducted as members of the Order of Canada. Thirteen Canadians will be inducted into the order as officers while one will become a companion.

Contacted by telephone while vacationing in Ontario, the two sisters said they were shocked to receive the honour, but also humbled.

“We share it with hundreds of brave and courageous children,” Hughes said.

O’Reilly called it “a team effort.”

“It’s wonderful because Sister Margaret and I worked together for a long time. We came to Winnipeg together. But it is the children we worked with who were the most generous gift to us. And to be so connected to that community.”

Both sisters, members of the Sisters of Sion, worked at Rossbrook House for 40 years. O’Reilly was co-executive director for more than 20 years and established Rising Sun High School. Hughes taught at its Wi Wabigooni Elementary School and established Rossbrook’s annual powwow. They were the last two local members of the Sisters of Sion when they moved to Saskatoon in 2019 to live with more than a dozen other members of their religious community.

“It was hard to leave, but we have connected with the Indigenous people in Saskatchewan,” O’Reilly said.

They’re not the only ones who worked at Rossbrook House to receive the Order of Canada. Sister Geraldine MacNamara, who founded Rossbrook House in 1976, received the honour in 1983, shortly before her death.

The sisters join other nationally known recipients of the honour, including sprinter Donovan Bailey and film and TV actress Sandra Oh.

Four other Winnipeggers will receive the honour, including two doctors.

Dr. David Rush, one of the country’s leading kidney transplant clinicians, and Dr. Michael West, former head of neurosurgery with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, and the surgeon who introduced gamma knife surgery in Canada, will both receive the honour.

“It is an honour,” Rush said. “But I was a bit surprised.

“I was proposed by some of my colleagues and I guess they did a pretty good job. I am both grateful and humbled.”

West said he was “proud to be part of it and humbled to be with the others. It is exciting.”

The other two are Gérard Jean, a musician who has raised the profile of Franco-Manitobain song in Canada and composed Histoire d’antan, considered to be the Franco-Manitoban anthem; and Dorothy Dobbie, a former Tory MP in the Mulroney government and founder of Pegasus Publications, which published the Manitoba Gardener and other magazines.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca