Sister Lucette Casavant
“Happy are those who rely on the Lord our God.” Psalm 144
July 31, 2014, Sister Lucette Casavant,
in religion Marie-Paul-du-St-Esprit
went home to God.
She was 90 years old and had been professed for 70 years.
Born in Roxton Pond, (Shefford), Quebec, on May 25, 1924,
she was the oldest of the three children of
Hector Casavant and Victoria Laflamme.
Lucette’s first years were peacefully spent in the village of Roxton Pond where she was born. She began school there with the Sisters of Saint Joseph until the second grade when the family moved to Coteau Station, in the Diocese of Valleyfield. Lucette completed her seventh grade at the village school in 1938. As a boarder at the Valleyfield Boarding School, administered by SNJM Sisters, she received her high school leaving Classical diploma in 1942.
On the twenty-fourth of July 1942, with a few of her classmates, Lucette entered the SNJM Novitiate, at the Motherhouse in Outremont. As a junior professed, she was assigned to teach music. From her early years in Coteau Station, and later in Valleyfield, Lucette had taken piano lessons. In community, she continued her studies in music at Vincent d’Indy where she received a laureate, a diploma in Gregorian Chant, a basic certificate in music and a certificate from the Ministry of Education. Thus, for eighteen years, Sister Lucette was a piano and singing teacher in several of our Boarding Schools in Quebec.
Following a serious health problem in 1961, Sister Lucette was named librarian at Collège Durocher in St-Lambert: she dedicated her time and energy there for twenty years. She was also committed to community and parish service. Having such fragile health, would Sister Lucette have enough strength for all her commitments? It was written: “Humour had something to do with it, as did her love for the Arts”.
For ten years, Sister Lucette was also director of Associates. “The associates always remember her as a woman with a profound interior life, who was warm-hearted, attentive to each one and persistent in what she believed to be good for the group’s development”.
In 2000, she was a “very active” retiree at Résidence Ste-Émélie in Viauville. In 2006, she dedicated herself to a ministry of prayer which she would continue at Maison Jésus-Marie in Longueuil. On July thirty-first, 2014, Sister Lucette entered the Father’s house and joyfully met the One in whom she had placed all her hope.