A Very Special Hoikety Choik

My 93-year-old mom, Mary Jean O’Shaughnessy Keating, is a 1949 graduate of St. Michael’s College. Diagnosed with dementia, she now can’t remember my name. Over the past few years, as my mother’s dementia deepened, I began to sing with her on our regular Skype calls. I wondered whether she might remember Hoikety Choik. To my astonishment, as I began the chant in one of our calls, she joined right in.

To my utter delight, unconscious of the loss of her memory, mom sang along with her own version of the cheer: “Ripperty rapperty ripperty rapperty, hee-hee-hee!” When we speak by Skype we often end with a rousing–and usually new-version of Hoikety Choik.

Mom loved St. Michael’s. Her older sisters, Millwood O’Shaughnessy Birch and Ruth O’Shaughnessy Moleski, preceded her. Mom was born in Cobalt, Ontario in 1928 and her dad worked at the O’Brien mine mill. As an adolescent he had moved from the Maritimes with his father to work in the silver mines in Cobalt, forfeiting the education he hoped for to help finance their large family back in the East. All his siblings went to university except him. Amazingly, in the 1940s he insisted that his daughters as well as his sons get the opportunity he missed.

When I went to see mom one weekend I wanted to make the most of our time together, as I didn’t know when I might see her again or how her memory might deteriorate. I cuddled up with her and she reminisced about her days at St Mike’s. As we talked, I was soon with the young 20-year-old student again. She told of life at Loretto College, of dances, travelling with the debating team, exams, and going to Mass. She told me her mom and dad travelled by train from Cobalt when her dad was on business and they took the O’Shaughnessy girls out to dinner, with the girls dressed to the nines for a fine dinner at the Royal York Hotel.

But mom’s years at St. Mike’s also included catastrophic loss. Mom was very close to her younger brother, John O’Shaughnessy. He entered St. Mike’s in September 1948 and contracted spinal meningitis that fall. He was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Mom took the streetcar after classes as often as she could to see him. John was flown home to Cobalt at Christmas. Mom never saw him alive again. He died in April and was buried on April 6, her 21st birthday, the year she graduated.

One man at St. Mike’s who loved to dance asked my mother out and captured her heart: Raymond Francis Keating. My dad grew up in Weston, Ontario. His mother died in childbirth when he was six. He quit school in Grade 9 to work as a delivery boy at the A&P because he couldn’t afford clothes to go to school. Dad always wanted an education and he told me he prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary regularly that he would have that opportunity. His prayers were answered when, as an RCAF war vet, he was given money for his education. He went off to St. Michael’s College, where he met mom and graduated in 1950. Mom and dad were married at St. Basil’s in 1951.

I have an alumni card at the Kelly library and whenever I’m there I drop by the 2nd floor to look at the picture of him with his graduating class. I grew up listening to my dad reminisce with awe about his philosophy classes at St. Mike’s. I knew I would go to St. Mike’s, and I did, having the pleasure of being introduced to philosophy by Fr. Edward Synan.

My parents became teachers and eventually, my dad became a high school principal. They were both gifted educators, teaching in Oshawa, Iroquois Falls, Cobalt and Sault Ste. Marie. Dad died in 2007.

In the 1970’s, while dad was a principal in the Sault, a young woman came into his office asking to finish her high school diploma. Because she was a year older than most high schoolers, another principal had refused to allow her to enroll. Dad said, “We can fix you up.” Twenty years later, when my dad was in intensive care in Sault Ste. Marie, in walked a woman who said, “Hello Mr. Keating!” Dad asked, “Do I know you?” She said, “I was the student you helped to finish her high school diploma so that she could be a nurse – your nurse, today.”

I was recently able to visit my mom after two years of Covid separation. While the bubbly Mary Jean O’Shaughnessy Keating has become a frail, 93-year-old whose words are now often nonsensical, I took one look into her face to see a sparkle in her eyes and a brilliant smile that told me her spirit is very much alive. I asked Mom if she would like to sing with me for all the students at St. Michael’s—especially those of you starting off, or struggling, or missing home, or finding 2021 a tough beginning. She said, “Yes!”

About the Author:  Ann Keating is a 1976 grad of St. Mike’s. She has had a varied career as a lawyer, as Director of Community Ministry for the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, and as Pastoral Consultant for the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, from which she retired in 2017. A lifelong learner, Ann also studied theology and psychotherapy.

Editor’s note: A longer version of this piece ran on our website, stmikes.utoronto.ca, on September 28, 2021, as part of our InsightOut blog. The blog is designed to tell the stories of the extended St. Mike’s community.