Julie Saccone, The StarPhoenix
Published: Saturday, March 11, 2006

Saskatchewan centenarian Mary MacIsaac never let her age slow her down. Skiing until age 108 and continuing to nourish her mind into her later years, the always witty 112-year-old had a simple motto. "The only thing that counts in life when it's over is what you've done for others," her son Ron MacIsaac recalled. MacIsaac, who died Friday of natural causes, lived that motto. She was believed to be the second-oldest woman in Canada. Born in Bay de Chaleur, N.B., on Dec. 27, 1893, as Mary Mac-Nair, she attended St. Francis Xavier University and spent her early teaching career at schools in Gull Lake, Mikado and Wolseley.

She met her future husband Jack MacIsaac in Wolseley. Two years later they married in Charlottetown, P.E.I., and settled in Prince Albert, where she continued to teach and the pair spent most of their lives.

The couple had five children.

MacIsaac taught high school Latin and physical education in Prince Albert and lectured occasionally at the University of Saskatchewan until 1997. She taught from 1919 to 1999.

MacIsaac, a strong matriarchal-type, was not afraid to wholeheartedly go after something that she believed in, daughter Mary Smith said.

"If you ever want to get anything done, get Mary MacIsaac, she'll get it done," a Prince Albert woman told a friend of Smith when she heard the legendary name.

And that's exactly what MacIsaac did.

She worked under Tommy Douglas in the 1960s to help form medical co-ops, including a co-op in Prince Albert, helped organized district libraries which allowed a higher quality of books to reach a greater number of people, and was a member of the Saskatchewan cancer commission, Ron MacIsaac said.

Beyond her public achievements, MacIsaac had a big heart and encouraging spirit.

In the 1930s, she fed people who jumped off freight trains and wound up at her doorstep asking for food.

"Very often when I was a kid, I was sitting in the kitchen eating with what we called a 'bum,' " Ron MacIsaac said.

The woman, who stopped driving after she accidentally drove on the wrong side of the road across Saskatoon's only bridge in 1918 or 1919, tutored students who couldn't afford to pay because she wanted them to finish school, Smith said. "She was her brother's keeper as they say. If somebody needed something and she was able to help, she did." MacIsaac's life, which spanned the death of Queen Victoria, the Boer War, the advent of computers, airplanes and televisions, the creation of medicare and the rise of Pope John Paul II, included friendships with notable individuals. Regular guests at her home included Grey Owl, the famous writer and wildlife conservationist, and Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables. In recent years, MacIsaac fought off kidney failure and pneumonia and was residing in St. Ann's home in Saskatoon. "She was very happy she had the five children she had," Smith said, reflecting on perhaps her mother's biggest accomplishment. "Meeting my husband was certainly my biggest success, I think," MacIssac told The Star-Phoenix in 2004. "We had wonderful children, who now tell me what to do." A funeral will be held for MacIsaac next week in Prince Albert and in Saskatoon.

© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2006