“MY wish was to go to India to teach children there but God had different plans for me.”

Instead of following in the footsteps of Mother Teresa, Sister Canisius, born on the Croatian island of Brac, was sent to Fremantle in 1936, just before the outbreak of WWII.

More than 78 years after disembarking from the SS Orontes in Fremantle, the nun has achieved another milestone, celebrating her 100th birthday yesterday.

“It took three weeks to get here and there wasn’t a lot here in those days,” the affable and widely known and loved sister told the Herald. “There were hardly any cars—a few horses but mostly people seemed to walk or catch the bus. They sent me here because there were a lot of Croatian people who had already been here many years.

“When I came there was no priest, no nuns … no pastoral care for these Croatian settlers. Our order, the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition, are missionaries and while I and three of my contemporaries volunteered for India we got a letter from our nuns in Fremantle to send someone for the Croatian community. The four of us left Marseilles and arrived in Fremantle on the 17th of November.

“Our convent was near St Patrick’s. There was very little in Fremantle and Spearwood was a very small place. Everyone worked extremely hard. I remember there were six Australian families, six Croatian families and six Italian families working the market gardens. There was no machinery, everything was done by hand—even the watering.

“Once a week, on Monday morning the families would load their produce onto a truck. One family had a truck and they would pick up all the vegetables and take everyone’s produce to the Perth fruit and vegetable market in Wellington Street. The children worked hard as well. They told me they didn’t like holidays because they had to work in the market gardens. Even when school was on they had to work before and after—it was a hard life.”

• Sister Carnisius celebrates her birthday with past students and well-wishers at the Croatian Community Centre in North Fremantle.

After studying and attaining teaching qualifications in Perth, Sister Canisius (born Katica Mladinic) caught a bus to St Jerome’s in Spearwood—then one of only two primary schools in the area—where she taught everything from the times table to spelling, reading and social studies. She recalls the poverty of the time, and says only people who could afford to pay school fees did so.

Sister Canisius devoted 49 years to teaching at St Jerome’s, the girls’ boarding school at St Patrick’s, St Joseph’s in Albany and Christ the King in Beaconsfield. But pastoral care was her other passion and she paid regular visits to inmates in Fremantle prison, brought succor to the sick in hospitals (30 years at Fremantle Hospital until a fall two years ago), and visited the elderly in nursing homes, a task she still undertakes today.

She has been a regular Tuesday institution at Villa Dalmacija since it was built 27 years ago and was duly recognised with a morning tea that stretched well into the afternoon on Tuesday. Similar celebrations were held at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Hilton and St Anne’s church in North Fremantle.

One of Sister Canisius’ fondest and strongest memories was the first Croatian Mass in WA in 1937. It was held in Spearwood’s St Jerome’s church which, she told the Herald, was built “stone by stone” by migrant, mostly Croatian, volunteers—and was celebrated by Father Lancelot Goody, later to become Archbishop of Perth.

“Father Goody went to Split, Croatia to study for 18 months and when he returned he came to St Jerome’s,” she recalled. “He knew enough Croatian to say Mass—you should have seen the people at church that day. Word got round of this Mass and people came from miles around, mostly on foot, and some came from as far away as Wanneroo. There were more people outside the church than in it.”

Mass in Croatian was not celebrated again until the 1950s.

After her teaching days ended in 1985, Sister Canisius took to teaching catechism, initially for Catholic children who attended government schools and then as a helper to various Croatian priests in North Fremantle and Gwelup. She maintained this regime until 2004 when she told Father Nikola Cabraja, who is still the parish priest at St Anne’s, that she would withdraw from teaching because “it isn’t nice that children can hear me but I can’t hear them”.

Sister Cansius was 90 at the time.

“She was aways a pleasure to work with,” Fr Cabraja recounted. “Her quiet authority will remain etched in the memory of generations and the respect she imparted to them is a magnificent legacy.”

Sister Canisius says her greatest blessing has been her good health: “My mind’s good—that’s the main thing for me and my good health is a great blessing from God—not everyone is blessed in this way,”she offered from her order’s home in Samson.

by EDDIE ALBRECHT