Travelling Light / The Way and Life of Tony Walsh.

Travelling Light The Way and Life of Tony Walsh 

WRITTEN BY John Buell PUBLISHED BY Novalis Press, 2004, ISBN: 2895074836, Softcover, pp. 100, $16.95 CDN 

In this biography, from the Novalis Out of the Ordinary series, John Buell writes about Tony Walsh, who lived for others and strove to remain anonymous himself. He wanted no publicity: "He asked me not to make notes of our conversations," Buell writes, "not to keep a file, not take photos, and not to write about him. I agreed, of course."

Born in England in 1898, Walsh enlisted in the British Army when he was still under age and saw action in the trenches with the Irish Guards. He won the Military Medal, but characteristically kept hidden the nature of the valorous action for which it was awarded. His two best friends and mentors were both killed in the war, and referring to this experience he wrote, "What had been my heart became like a stone."

Five years after the end of the war, he decided to try his luck in Canada, though he had no contacts, no prospects, no trade or craft. He spent two years working on a ranch in Alberta, picked strawberries near Mission, B.C., and was working on a fox farm near Okanagan Lake when he received a phone call, followed by a letter, which would give his life a new direction. A Benedictine monk working among Indians in the Okanagan Valley was recommending him for a job as a teacher at an Indian Day School near Vernon. On the phone Tony said, "Father, you must be crazy, because I know nothing about education or kids."

Nevertheless he soon found himself in charge of thirty students on a reserve, with one notable advantage over most of the whites who taught Indians--he did not look down on them, but treated them as fellow human beings. In a few weeks he had realized that they were talented and creative people. Without directing them, but merely making suggestions, he got them to mingle the traditions of their culture with Christian themes, in drawings and paintings. Eventually the children undertook a series of larger studies tracing the changes since the arrival of the white man--the first paddle steamer on Okanagan Lake, the first train, present-day life on the reserve, and so on. Eventually an exhibit of these paintings was taken to Europe in 1938 and they were shown in London, Paris and other cities. In time the group from the Inkameep reserve began to give public performances of their plays, dances and songs. They kept giving performances until the war and gasoline rationing made travel difficult. Today, Buell writes, the work Tony Walsh did sixty years ago is looked on by the anthropologists at the University of Victoria and elsewhere with a sort of mild awe.

In the summer of 1942 Tony applied for a position with the Canadian Legion War Services, and he began this work in January 1943. After the war ended, he decided to cut his ties with the West; in December of 1949, he arrived in Montreal. He had no job and no prospects, but he did have a purpose, a most unusual one: to found a "house of hospitality for the poor," which meant his living a life of poverty himself, in imitation of Christ.

His main inspiration was Saint Benedict Joseph Labre (1758-1783), who had been a wanderer, a tramp, homeless, penniless, going from shrine to shrine, following his solitary vocation. Friends like Murray Ballantyne, editor of a Catholic paper called The Ensign, helped him establish a house for the poor in Montreal, and he called it Labre House; over a ten-year period it had a considerable impact.

This was largely due to Tony's ability to move people. Buell describes him as a poor speaker: he spoke without notes, he never raised his voice, yet he carried conviction. "The effect on audiences was remarkable," Buell writes. "From this quiet, ill-dressed, not-young-man, a nobody, came these words that had nothing to do with their conventional preoccupations, even religion for that matter, but with the experience of taking the awful risk of trusting Providence."

In spite of his desire to avoid the limelight, he did receive some recognition. In 1975 Concordia University awarded him an honourary degree, and in a ceremony at Rideau Hall in 1990 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. Once before, when Georges Vanier was Governor-General, Mme. Vanier had asked Tony to come and advise her about her son Jean--who had just finished his doctorate in philosophy and was soon to open his first L'Arche home.

She asked Tony to borrow a black suit and a white shirt and a black tie, and not to come to Government House "with your pajamas and toothbrush in a paper bag." As Buell remarks, she knew her Tony.

In spite of his privations, Tony lived to be 95. He was buried following a funeral Mass at St. Willibrord's Church in Montreal, and on his tombstone are three lines: Tony Walsh, 1898-1994; Alone for Others

John Buell concludes, "He lived a virtuous life. At times he may have lived it heroically."

One puzzle in the book, however, is why the faith which figures so prominently in the latter part is not at least fore-shadowed in the earlier part.

"All this is known by God whom he served," Buell concludes, "and I am content to leave it at that."