Description
Anna Corcoran, the eldest of five children, was born in 1888 on a small farm in Chute Panet, Quebec, 40 miles northwest of Quebec City. She was educated at the Jesus Mary Convent in Lévis, earning a Quebec teacher’s licence in 1908. After a brief career as a teacher and a postmistress, she returned to the family homestead in 1913. For the next twenty years she cared for her ailing mother and helped her aging father run the small dairy farm. After the death of her parents in 1932 she took over the operation of the farm and worked the land, virtually single-handed, for another 25 years. Grounded by her strong faith, she accepted her calling with joy and good cheer, providing a welcoming haven for family, friends and strangers. Through her simple life of selfless devotion to others, she provided a strong role model to her nieces and nephews and was a trailblazer for independent women, decades before the women’s movements of the 1970s and 1980s.
