Courage and Complicity

In August 1947, Mary Brock boarded a train in Toronto. She was headed for the wilds of Northwestern Ontario and a teaching job at an Indian residential school. Her family was horrified.

At the end of her first day of teaching, Mary was horrified too. This was not the exciting adventure she had imagined. But Mary wasn’t one to give up. Buoyed by her ideals and pragmatism, she kept showing up.

She lasted the academic year. When she boarded the train for home, she knew she had failed, in every way that mattered. The ideals she had come with had shattered on her classroom floor, and a big piece of her heart lay buried behind a small log cabin in the woods.

Sixty years later, two unexpected gifts forced her to take a second look back and a more hopeful look forward. Maybe her ideals weren’t so naïve after all.