The life story of Shirley Donovan 1931 – 2022

Written by her son, Francis Donovan

On December 6, 2022, Manitoba lost a pioneer in the field of education.

Shirley Donovan was born in Neepawa, Manitoba, on April 27, 1931, and grew up in Neepawa and in Dauphin, Manitoba. Herself the daughter of a teacher and school administrator, after graduating from high school, at the age of 17 she began a long teaching career, starting out as a “certificate teacher” licenced by the government of Manitoba to teach in the one-room schoolhouses of various small towns and hamlets. It sounds incredible to us now, but that’s the way it was in Manitoba in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In this capacity, she not only taught, but wore the many hats of a small-town teacher on the Canadian prairies in those days. For instance, as baseball coach, she had to borrow a student from a neighbouring town, having only eight students of her own at her first school! Nonetheless, using the resources at her disposal, she developed a strategy that led her little team to some considerable success. Put the strongest players out in the field, even though they all want to be on first base. The other team can hit the ball as far as they want, it will always come back!

As the only teacher in these little communities, she was also the chief fund-raiser, and would organize raffles, auctions and other activities along with the other local ladies, to fund school activities. The most successful of these was a picnic featuring an auction where several young ladies would each prepare a picnic lunch, and the highest bidder won the privilege of having lunch with the lady who made it. Needless to say, lunch with the teacher always provoked a hotly contested bidding war!

Another task that fell to the teacher in those days was distributing the government bounty on prairie-dog tails. These critters were seen as a plague by agriculturists, and children were on the front lines, being offered 1 cent per tail. It’s not clear whether this policy even made a difference, the reproductive capacities of prairie-dogs being what they are. But in those times of scarcity, the bounty was no negligible thing, and Shirley, although reputed by all who knew her to be a kind-hearted person, did her duty and turned those tails into copper pennies for her young charges.

Another of Shirley’s early assignments was in Churchill, Manitoba in the 1950s. There she taught the children of the personnel stationed at the Canadian Forces Base, as well as those of the village of Churchill and the local aboriginal population. Imagine the adventure for a young woman in the 1950s! Teaching the three Rs for sure, but also fishing for arctic char, learning to build a fire without matches, and spending the night in an igloo she built with her students, in the dead of an arctic winter.

It was during this time that Shirley met her future husband Peter, a research scientist at the Canadian Forces Base. Together they shared many an adventure, eventually settling in Winnipeg and founding a family. Shirley and Peter were married for more than 50 years, until he passed away in 2010.

After her early teaching experiences in small town Manitoba Shirley attended Normal School in Winnipeg, and later, in her 40s, earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Education from the University of Manitoba, teaching full time and raising a family of four children at the same time.

After many years of teaching classes of 25 to 30 students, Shirley developed a specialty, teaching children with speech disorders and related challenges. This field came to be known as ‘special education’, although she was doing it long before the term was even invented. Perhaps the smaller classes, and the more full and intimate teaching experience, reminded her of her oneroom schoolhouse days long ago. At the end of her career, Shirley likely had as much experience in this field as anyone in the country, if not more, and her efforts and passion laid the groundwork for the special education programs that are in place today.

Shirley had a long, successful, and above all, a happy career, as one can see from the smile she wears in every picture that accompanies this article. One hopes her example can serve as an inspiration.

*Special thanks to Gladstone School for providing the photographs that accompany this article.