John James (Jim) McCann (b. 26 January 1890 d. 26 July 1972)
BROTHER JOHN EVANGELIST McCANN
This is a very abbreviated account of Brother Jim’s life. For the full account go to his life story at the end of the pages.
He was born in Belfast on 26 January 1890, the eldest of a family of eight, five boys and three girls, and christened John James and he became known to his family as Jim.
Jim attended schools in Belfast, Drogheda, Tallanstown, and finally Dundalk CBS, where he did an Intermediate Examination in 1905. Authority in the household was hierarchical, with John by virtue of seniority and not a small degree of natural leadership occupying the third place.
In 1902 his mother Wilhelmina contracted TB and died, leaving a heart-broken husband and a bewildered, uncomprehending family numbed at their loss. This shattering traumatic experience was shared by all the children to the degree that their understanding could grasp it – most of all by Jim, the eldest, then a lanky twelve-year-old. At this early age he was forced to become a substitute parent to the younger children. In seeing to the needs of his younger brothers and sisters he developed a fine insight into the very heart of children, and an inexhaustible measure of patience.
Fresh from his Intermediate Examination, Jim decided to become a Christian Brother.Though badly needed at the home, his father consented. On Christmas Day 1905 he received the habit and took the name of John the Evangelist as his patron.
By the year’s end Jim stood almost six feet tall, quite distinguished by his untamed shock of black hair (never tamed and never lost – the years bleached it silver-white) and in a state of readiness for the adventure and the challenge of the Christian Brother’s life. The short intense course of academic-cum-professional training that ensued equipped him for his first mission, Carlow, in August 1907. Here a nasty bout of flu laid him low and the persistent cough that followed drained his vitality and gave cause for anxiety. So in November he was transferred to Synge Street, where he would receive better medical attention.
He was now three months short of eighteen years and doing a great job of teaching in the junior school, which he accomplished with a zest and verve that was to be one of his distinctive characteristics.
Then suddenly came the call to India after one short year of the Irish mission. He was 19 years old. After a brief visit home to Belfast to bid goodbye to his family and suffering the pangs of ‘the little death,” he sailed for India with Cyprian Corbett and Baptist Collins and arrived in Calcutta on 18 October 1908. Cyprian died of smallpox four months later. Baptist served with the Indian Province with distinction for over forty years and then joined the English Province.
Jim spent two years in Calcutta, which short period heralded a series of fairly rapid transfers – the normal lot of the young Christian Brother and a valuable element in his growth – and so we find him in Goethals (Kurseong) from 1911 to 1913, back in Calcutta in 1914, in Naini Tal from 1915 to 1918, where in December 1915 he took final vows, and again back in St. Joseph’s (Calcutta) from 1919 to early 1923.
In March of that year, he was appointed superior of St. Edmunds College, Shillong. Brother Stanislaus O’Brien, brother of Joseph O’Brien of Synge Street, then community chronicler, succinctly states, “This is his first directorship but he should do well. He has had long experience in India although he is a young man, and he is a thorough school man.”
He was scarcely a month in office when he was struck down by the dreaded disease, enteric, after previously spending most of his free time at the bedside of a boarder who was convalescing from the same fever. Jim spent ten weeks in hospital and in the early stages his delirious condition frequently gave rise to grave anxiety. His strong constitution and the tireless care of stone-deaf Nurse Evans eventually brought him through though his emaciated frame took months to recover. Nevertheless he forged ahead with his plans and succeeded in securing affiliation of the college with the University of Calcutta up to the Intermediate Arts and Science standard. In the college he taught Latin to the 1A Class and was class master of Class 9 in the school.
The fact that, at the provincial chapter held in Kurji in February 1925, Brother Evangelist was one of the four elected members – the others, eight in number, being ex officio – shows the high regard the province had for this 35-year-old brother. His term of office as superior in St. Edmund’s having come to an end in December 1928, he and Brother Cyprian Roe sailed to Ireland in April 1929 for a holiday, this being his first visit home in twenty-one years.
Thereafter the kaleidoscope begins flickering again, yielding St. Michael’s (Kurji) and Goethals (Kurseong) each for a period of two years as sub-superior; and then, in January 1934, St. Patrick’s (Asansol) as superior. His arrival in St. Pat’s coincided with a severe earth-tremor, the subject of much banter later between himself and the brothers. It was violent enough to topple part of the building.
At this period quite a number of brothers in the Indian Province, and indeed throughout the Congregation, were seriously worried over the practice of nearly unlimited terms of office that was becoming the norm and that the letter of the Constitutions permitted. Brother Jim had been giving the matter careful consideration for some years. He saw that the practice was beginning to create disaffection in many genuinely sound but worried religious men who shared his misgivings.
His dilemma was one of conscience; whether to abide by the ruling as it stood, which would simply maintain the status quo, or to represent matters to the Holy See. After much careful consideration and prayer for enlightenment he decided, in the best interests of the congregation and the province he loved, to go ahead and make formal representation. By now he was convinced that passivity in the face of patent unrest in the province could only bring disaster. At this time he was forty-five years old.
After the 1935 provincial chapter, while in his second year as superior of St. Patrick’s, he put together a letter to the Holy See stressing the fact that certain articles of the Constitutions needed overhauling, which in his view could only be accomplished if Rome looked into the matter. He sent copies of that letter to each of ten senior men in the province, asking them to read it carefully and, if the letter met with their approval, to sign it and send it to the Sacred Congregation for Religious. Any of the ten who did not approve of it were requested to destroy it and forget about the matter. As far as he could gather, the result was negative, for he got no reply; but that a copy (probably his) reached the Holy See was certain, as subsequent events proved.
St. Michael’s, Kurji, brought its own quota of happy and anxious years. As usual with Jim, there was a fine sense of community, and the school waxed strong. World War II came, and with it food rationing, which particularly affected the Indian boarding schools, and catering for the boarders became a nightmare. Then in March 1942 St. Patrick’s andSt. Vincent’s boarding schools in Asanol and St. Edmund’s in Shillong were occupied by Allied Army and Air Force personnel; so the major problem of trying to accommodate the displaced boarders had to be faced. Jim and the St. Michael’s community did their utmost to help, and within a short time, the number of boarders had risen from 200 to 450, making the business of administration and organization extremely difficult.
To add to their troubles the “Quit India” movement that same year caused them much worry. The movement, one of the many phases in the struggle that eventually brought about independence in 1947, was political but in the local situation all foreigners were targets; so for five memorable days electricity and all foodstuffs were cut off from St. Michael’s. The climax came when a hostile mob surrounded the school and threatened to burn it down, but at this stage the local people, who had experienced the kindness and gentlemanly behaviour of the brothers, came to the rescue and the danger passed.
Once again his term of office as superior suffered an untimely end, but this time for a different reason. In January 1943 the Apostolic Visitor, Reverend John Hannon SJ, appointed Brother John Evangelist McCann provincial superior of the Indian Province.
That same year, 1943, the building of the new orphanage at103 Dum Dum Road,Calcutta, came to a standstill owing to sky-rocketing costs and the rigid control of steel and cement, which were being diverted to military requirements. It meant the building would remain unfinished till after the war. Jim learnt that the American armed forces, engaged in the Burma theatre of war, were in need of buildings in and around Calcutta. He promptly contacted the American Authorities and offered them the orphanage for the duration of the war but on condition that they completed the building according to the plan. They readily agreed and in a short time the orphanage was completed. It was handed back to the provincial in 1946 and in the following year the old Catholic Male Orphanage at Murghihatta moved out to the new and more commodious St. Mary’s Orphanage at Dum Dum.
At the provincial chapter of 1947 Brother Jim was proposed as provincial; thus was vindicated Father Hannon’s nomination, and in the general chapter of that year the act was passed that permitted the foreign brothers of the Indian province to go home for a holiday every eight years – a project very dear to the provincial – and a great boost to the morale of the province, jaded after the war years and the frustration of unfulfilled promises.
In 1953 when his term of office as provincial came to an end, he was appointed provincial bursar, an office he filled with great efficiency until 1960. The financial statement he presented to the provincial chapter of 1960 was remarkably lucid and comprehensive. The difficult years of provincialship, however, had taken their toll on his constitution and so in 1954 he spent some time in hospital for hernia and prostate-gland operations. In 1954 he was transferred to Goethals School, Kursoeong, where the bracing climate restored his health. Here he was back again in the classroom environment.
His golden jubilee in 1955 was for him an added incentive for deepening and renewing himself as a Christina Brother and of course the whole province acclaimed him on this worthy occasion.
He was transferred to Shillong in 1959. Shillong was probably his favourite place though he had not lived there since 1929.To supplement his class teaching, he took on the job of librarian, which he used to maximum effect in directing the boys in their reading.
With the years, illness kept dogging him and in May 1972, when he had spent nearly two months in hospital with little benefit, it was decided that he had better go home to Ireland for further medical treatment. After a short stay in the Mater Hospital, Dublin, where he had a successful operation for a fistula that had been bothering him, he went to Ballyhaise, Co. Cavan, to holiday with his people there, and to convalesce. He made magnificent progress and wrote back to the brothers in India telling them the good news that he had already made his plans to return to Shillong in August.
Then at9 p.m.and in broad daylight on 26 July tragedy struck. He had been visiting his sister, Edith and was crossing the road to his brother’s house nearby when a passing car knocked him down. He was rushed unconscious to theCavanSurgicalHospital, where he died atsix o’clocknext morning. His brother Leo put it thus: “The surgeon had high hopes at first that he would recover but it was God’s will he should end his life where he began his work sixty-seven years ago – inIreland. My brother had seen all his relatives and friends around Ballyhaise and was preparing to return toDublinto start on a quick tour around the South and west of the country before returning toIndia. He had quite recovered from his operation and was in the best of health and spirits, and looking forward to his being back in India soon again. He was laid to rest at Marino on 29 July and there were few dry eyes during the solemn burial service in the beautiful chapel in Marino.”