06/03/2020
Last weekend, May 29-31, the classes ending in '0 and '5 should have celebrated their milestone anniversaries at Alumni Reunion. Unfortunately these celebrations had to be postponed. St. Mike's alumni have sent us memories and reflections from their time at SMC as they looked back fondly over the weekend.
Caroline Di Giovanni, Class of 1970 writes:
'This would be the 50th anniversary reunion for me. I have some great memories of being part of the English Language and Literarure Honours course (aka EL&L) 1966-1970. We had a fabulous first year Shakespeare course with Prof. John Meagher; we had to take a year of Anglo Saxon, which I can only say I survived, thanks to the kindness of Fr. John Madden. Our profs included Fred Flahiff, Fr. Charles Leland, and Fr. Bob Madden and others who engaged us, challenged us, and made us feel part of the Community of Scholars.
My friends from that class include Marion O'Connor, who always came First of First and went on to a scholarly career at the University of Kent, UK ;John O'Connor, whose career has been at St. Michael's all this time; Mark McWatt, a scholar and a writer who was Dean of the University of the West Indies; and Catherine Foy Schryer, a professor at Guelph University and lately at Ryerson University.
Mark McWatt and I started the writers' group which produced the little magazine Graffiti. There were poetry readings and guest speakers like Margaret Laurence, the Writer in Residence one year. Mark and I have each published books of poetry, and we've each edited anthologies, mine of Italian Canadian writers and his of West Indian poetry.
I met Alberto Di Giovanni in my first year at St. Mike's when I took an Italian class and joined the Italian Club. the campus was lively with a number of American students from the Western year and Italian Canadian students whose families had immigrated after the Second World War. I was from the States and Alberto was recently arrived from Italy. What a pair. We went to the At Home in 1967 and 1968. I missed my graduation ceremony because I went to Europe that summer with my Loretto Residence room mate Alice Johnson. We met up with Alberto and the student group he had organized, so we joined them for Florence and Venice. Then I went to Boston for 2 years of a Master's degree in Drama. 2 weeks after that graduation Alberto and I were married in my home town, Havertown, Pennsylvania.
We came back to live our lives in Toronto. All 3 of our children: Carlo, Franca, and Annamaria, graduated from St. Mike's. In 2014 Alberto and I were both named Honorary Fellows of the University of St. Michael's College. We have sponsored the annual Dante Lecture, and we donated a collection of rare books and special editions on Dante to the Kelly Library, in honour of Fr. John Kelly. "
