To understand the significance of this event, it would help, as Rev. Sherry suggested, to note how the Jesuits came to operate a school north of Guelph in the first place.
Induction into the Society of Jesus is a lengthy process. However, it often begins with two years as a "novice" undergoing spiritual training, followed by two years in the "juniorate," undergoing academic instruction. This may lead to university studies and further tuition in religous philosophy as well as practical experience.
At the turn of the 20th century, Jesuit novices in Canada were instructed at the Pedro Aruppe Novitiate in Montreal. It was decided that English-speaking novices would be better served at a different location in an English-speaking facility. A site just north of Guelph was chosen. Guelph had strong connections with the Jesuits, who ran the prominent Church of Our Lady in the city, so this link may have recommended the locale to the order.
A 280-acre farm known as "Mount Tara" was bought from Thomas Bedford and the impressive house was expanded, with a third storey and several new wings added on the back over the years. Neighbouring properties were also added as the instituion grew. A large, three-storey dormitory was added on in 1933 to accommodate the growing student body, which provided some welcome local employment during the Great Depression.
Besides training Jesuit priests, the location of the novitiate on a farm meant that agriculture became part of the job at Ignatius. Unlike Benedictines or Trappists, who typically live in monastaries integrated with farms where wines or cheeses may be produced, Jesuits are more academic in orientation, so farming was more-or-less an accident for the establishment north of Guelph. Nonetheless, agriculture quickly assumed a central role, the farm producing much of the food consumed at the novitiate, while the novices assisted with farming operations.
An article in the 1 September 1951 Kitchener-Waterloo Record describes the farm then as follows:
The order’s property includes 550 acres, of which 187 acres is under cultivation. There are 55 acres in pasture, 33 acres of summer fallow, 105 acres of marginal land, eight acres in wheat, seven acres in rye, 72 acres in oats, 47 in hay, 20 acres in corn, three acres in potatoes, and 2.5 acres of garden, including a greenhouse.There was a herd of about 250 Holsteins and Herefords cows, of which about 35 provided the milk.
The orchard included 17 acres of apples, eight acres of pears, and a one-acre experimental plot where various new varieties of fruits are being developed in co-operation with the Ontario Agricultural College. All grain is used for feeding the farm’s livestock. Except for a certain amount of milk sold in order to buy prepared meats, all farm produce is used to feed the community.
The farming operation was run by lay brothers, that is, men who joined the Jesuit order but did not aim to become priests. One such man noted in several sources was Brother Ben Reischman, who performed plumbing, electrical and carpentry work for the novitiate although his passion was the orchard. As a lay brother, Reischman did not have a salary but worked for room and board, with the order undertaking to look after him upon his retirement.
Besides assisting with the farm, novices were assigned other duties both on the grounds and off. Some of these were noted in the local papers, as when the novices built a new road leading to the novitiate from Highway 6 in 1932, the old one being a direct lane in a straight line from the highway with the new one being the still-familiar S-shaped route past the neighbouring Marymount Cemetery. In 1943, novices were sent to downtown Guelph to offload 800 to 1000-pound bales of wool that were brought to town for the manufacturing of war materials. Assisting at local Catholic schools, St. Joseph's Hospital, the Ontario Reformatory, etc., were also regular assignments.
Perhaps the most exciting gig was forming a posse to search the grounds for a man who had stolen a taxi cab in Kitchener in 1948, was run off the road by police on the highway in front of the novitiate and then escaped pursuit on foot. The novices helped police to scour the grounds but the suspect was not found. He was later located in Sudbury and brought to Kitchener for trial.
Accounts of instruction at the novitiate portray it as challenging and disciplinarian. The purpose of the novitiate aimed at spiritual examination and instruction. William Johnson, who attended St. Stanislaus from 1949 to 1951, reports a rather isolating program geared toward conformity with the order's rules and outlook. Personal possessions were taken away and standard clothing issued. A rigid daily routine was followed, each activity being delineated by the ringing of a bell. Sounding of the bell was expected to bring an instant response:
You could tell the old novices from the new by the way they responded. If the bell rang in the middle of a sentence, the experienced novice would plunge into instant silence. A laugh was broken mid-guffaw. A written word was broken mid-letter.Depending on the activity novitates were pursuing, the bell might be rung at intervals as long as half-an-hour or as short as two-and-one-half minutes.
Students were discouraged from forming personal attachments with each other. For example, students were not allowed to speak together in pairs, to prevent any sort of intimacy from forming. Groupings for conversation or other purposes were usually selected by authorities and not the novices themselves. Rules forbade novices from voicing doubts about the faith or continuation in training. Recommended topics included heaven and the good works of the Jesuits in Canada.
Most striking was the mortification of the flesh. Each novice was issued with small whip of knotted cords applied to the back or buttocks three times a week, to help instill "sexual continence." Similarly, novices were given a chain made of six looped lengths of wire that could be worn around the thigh or ankle. When worn, it chafed the skin sufficiently to constitute a form of penance.
(Stephen Carry (2007) gives a more detailed reminiscence of his time as a novice at St. Stanislaus, around the same time.)
These "old ways" at St. Stanislaus began to change, beginning with the big fire. Around 6:40pm on 18 November 1954, diners in the refectory noticed the smell of smoke, apparently coming from one of the nearby workshops. The alarm was raised and residents organized to evacuate people and valuable items from the old building complex. Rev. J.A. Leahy, an amputee, slid down a fire escape to safety. Statues from the chapel, constructed in 1923, were removed to a safe distance.
A kind of bucket brigade formed behind the chapel was items of food, clothing, and furniture were passed along and heaped up outside.
Efforts to fight the fire were complicated by its "chemical nature." Also, only one pumper truck from Guelph arrived in response to the alarm. The Novitiate was in the county and not the city, and city rules prevented a larger repsonse without special prior arrangement, which had not been made. The pumper connected a hose to the nearby pond on Marden Creek but the volume of water thus available was insufficient. The fire swept through the cellars, the chapel, the refectory and kitchen as well as the halls and parlors. By 8pm, the building was a "blazing beacon," visible as far away as Fergus, which produced a huge shower of burning embers.
The fire spread to the Noviatiate's hydro lines, producing a portentious sight (Mercury, 19 November 1954):
Vivid flashes of blue and white blazed out from broken power lines. One hydro pole was ignited by sparks and reared into the air in the shape of a fiery cross—its bolts and guy wires glistening white hot.Naturally, nearby roads became clogged with the cars of curious onlookers.
By morning, all that remained of the chapel, workshops and many accommodations was two chimneys and a few teetering walls.
As a result, a temporary chapel, refectory, kitchen and library had to be incorporated into the remaining structures, and 86 men had to be housed in accommodations designed for 56.
The Jesuit order decided to build anew. In 1957, the Jesuit Fund kicked off a campaign to raise over $1.3m to design and construct new buildings. The ceremonial sod turning followed the next year (as noted above) and construction began. The ceremonial laying of the cornerstone ensued on Friday, 13 November 1959, the stone being laid at the base of the new chapel and the silver trowel being wielded by His Excellency the Most Rev. J.F. Ryan, Bishop of Hamilton.
Once construction was finished, an open house was held on 25 September 1960. Hundreds of guests were given tours of the new chapel, refectory and dining area, kitchen, classrooms, dormitory (with accommodation for 140), infirmary and library. (A new workshop had also been completed, which was connected to the main buildings by a tunnel, though this was not on the tour.)
Besides the new buildings, the old St. Stanislaus Novitiate was reinaugurated as "Ignatius College." (In fact, the official change had occured the previous year through an act of Provincial Parliament.) The new college was affiliated with St. Mary's University, a university in Halifax also run by the Jesuits at the time.
A series of postcards were printed to celebrate the new institution. The views on the cards showcased the updating of the new college through the modern design of its new buildings. Colour postcards were often used in this era to show off the modernity of the institutions they depicted, and renewed Ignatius College was no exception.
Changes did not stop with the novitiate's new name and structures. Williams (1969) remarks that the tenor of education there changed as a consequence of the Second Vatican Council of the mid-1960s. Under Pope John XXIII, the church underwent a process of updating, and the education of Jesuits was significantly affected. Williams lists some of the ways in which instruction of the novices had changed since his time:
They have done away with the discipline and the chain, the public self-accusations in the dining room and the informing. ... The ever-present cassock has almost disappeared. The novices might wear it to mass, but spend most time in casual clothes. The instant blind obedience to orders is a rueful memory to the new-style Master of Novices, Reverend John English. ... There is even a decision making house council, with novices represented. The lock step of old has been replaced by an individualized daily program, worked out between the novice and Father English. ... Television, radio, newspapers, magazines—even movies—penetrate today's Novitiate.In addition, the novices spent their second year at the newly formed University of Guelph as full-time students. The Reverend John Wickham, who taught English at the College, observed that "there have been more changes in the Novitiate here in the last five years than there were in the whole 430-year history of the order."
A further alteration to the Novitiate was the establishment of the Loyola Retreat House in 1963. The existing Jesuit retreat house in Oakville had become a little too dear to maintain and was to be sold off to be converted to a municipal golf course. In addition, the Oakville site had itself been a converted manor house and was not especially well suited for the purposes of a retreat. So, a purpose-built facility in the amenable surroundings of Ignatius College was identified as a desirable replacement.
As a result, plans were made for a 48-room house (soon extended to 72) featuring its own kitchen, dining, and rooming facilities. On 10 September 1963, the Very Rev. A.J. Macdougall, SJ, Provincial of the Jesuit Fathers of Upper Canada Province, wielded the shiny shovel and ceremonially turned over the sod on the site of the new structure. The timing seemed extra providential as the year was also the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Novitiate.
Appropriately, the new, modern Loyal Retreat facility was also celebrated with the issue of a set of postcards featuring both interior and exterior views.
The new Loyola Retreat House was fulsomely described in an article in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record (Taylor, 20 June 1964). The author comments that, "When the first retreatants walk through the main doors, they probably will be impressed with the architecture, strongly reminiscent of a Spanish monastery." Also discernable in the House's decor was a trend to modern simplicity: "the chapel is almost stark with none of the huge statues and massive altars of the past."
Of course, much of the attraction of the Retreat House is outside the building itself. The farm fields, woodlots, creek, gardens, and orchards of the farm provide many places well suited for the quiet contemplation integral to a retreat. As the Very Rev. Angus MacDougall, SJ, Provincial of the English Speaking Jesuits, stated at its official opening, the Retreat House offers “an opportunity to get away from it all over the weekends and let God speak to your soul" (Mercury, 29 June 1964).
Although Ignatius College represented a substantial adjustment of Jesuit training to modern times, the project was ultimately proved unsustainable. The high water mark was 1961, when the paint was still drying on the College, when the population of novices was about 90. The number declined as the years went by, there being only 8 in 1991. The College ceased operation as a novitiate in 1994. Two years later, the College buildings were reconstituted as "Orchard Park" and rented out to local groups and concerns compatible with the mission of the new Jesuit Centre.
Loyola House developed a set of spiritual retreats that proved popular and were undertaken by people from around the world. Beside programs offered by the House itself, interested groups could rent the facilities to run events organized for themselves. These events need not be Catholic in orientation (though the House did reject a women's spiritutality workshop in 1993 on the grounds that its celebration of Beltane was too pagan).
Unfortunately, both Orchard Park and the Loyola Retreat House have reached the end of the line. Orchard Park proved too expensive to maintain on the income derived from rentals and closed in June 2025. It will mostly likely be demolished. Loyola House is due to close at the end of the year.
The Jesuit Centre is engaged in re-envisioning its future. Its agricultural and ecological projects remain vital. Perhaps it will transform again.
Another event of historical interest connected with the St. Stanislaus Novitate was the so-called Guelph Novitiate Raid of 1918. Enjoy!
Works consulted for this post include:
- Small, M. (1965). "Division D, Concession 3, Lots 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, Guelph Township. Tweedsmuir histories.
- Johnson, W. (1969, March 29). "God's voice is no longer a Jesuit bell." Globe & Mail.
- Casey, S. (2007). "Elected silence, in "The greater glory: thirty-seven years with the Jesuits." McGill-Queens Unviersity Press, chapter 5.
