TRANSCRIPT

My history teacher in my fourth year of secondary school was Sister Madeleine Gazaille, who has since left the religious life. She had a Ph.D. in Greek history. Once she brought her 'brick' (doctoral thesis) into class. I was impressed. She used to travel quite a bit, and when she got back, she'd spend hours showing us slides of her trips. I particularly remember slides of a trip she took to Sicily as part of a course in Roman history. A volcano had erupted near the inn where Sister Madeleine was staying, and we could see lava flow in the distance. The photographs were magnificent. My existence at the time can be summed up like this: I lived near the school and had been attending CMI for a number of years. My horizons were rather limited. When I saw those pictures, I said to myself, 'This is amazing! I've got to see it too!' When I got to university, I studied Greek and Roman history. I studied archaeology for five years and did a lot of traveling. Every time I saw something that took my breath away, I thought about Sister Madeleine Gazaille. It would occur to me that she must have had this same feeling too. She was my inspiration.

Louise Létourneau
student at CMI from 1971 to 1982