INTRODUCTION

As this obituary makes plain, Janet Somerville was an extraordinary individual by any measure. Her bright spirit and acute intelligence made an immediate and lasting impression. All wrapped in a comprehensive Catholic/Christian sensibility, I was introduced to her by Father Richard Renshaw in the early 1970s. They were both based in Toronto but she came on a speaking tour to Fredericton where I had the pleasure of driving her from one event to the other.

Janet had a capacity for perception of people’s personalities and she liked my Christian hippie style of appreciating her gifts and listening to her mobile observations. I was trained as a community development worker for the south western region of rural New Brunswick and really enjoyed escorting resource people like her around, trying to fill them in on the background of those they would be addressing. Trying to make myself useful, as my mother used to put it.

Once you met someone like Janet in that context, you felt entitled to make further claims on her as a friend as the years rolled along, so we stayed in touch even after I left Toronto in the later 1970s after theology school there.

When her mother was in her latter stages, I visited with Janet at her place where she was caring for her. It was a memorable occasion. I remember her getting a phone call for a media interview, and hearing her say that her feminism was a Jungian version where every person has both masculine and feminine traits in their makeup.

I was shocked to see a piece in the diocesan Toronto Catholic newspaper focused on her increasing dementia a few years back. Her main concern was that she not forget God. After that I stumbled upon a book that was dedicated to her by the poet and former CBC radio producer of “The Ideas Series”, Phyllis Webb. I knew that Janet had been one of the originators of that program, along with Barbara Frum.

It was a book of essays and I remember Janet telling me she was close friends with a very fine poet when I sent a poem I wrote that attempted to describe her. I was able to track down Phyllis Webb on Salt Spring Island and we had an animated conversation about Janet who was always in touch on their birthdays.

After that I called Janet on an old but good number I had. She remembered Phyllis but couldn’t place me. Her personality and manner of speaking seemed the same. Too much time and space had passed for the old rapport but it was certainly great to be in touch with one of the outstanding influences on my church communications career.

Her father had been the outstanding editor of the Catholic Register in Toronto. Novalis has published an excellent little biography of Henry Somerville which I devoured when I had the chance.

It was Janet who flatteringly described me as someone for whom life was not a problem to be solved, nor an act to get together but a Mystery to be lived. Blessed Janet Somerville, Rest in the peace of Eternal Life.

– Patrick Jamieson

Janet was born in Toronto in 1938, the sixth and youngest child of Margaret Cooper and Henry Somerville, then editor of The Catholic Register. As a young man, Henry Somerville had become a workers’ rights militant through the influence of Pope Leo XIII’s writings. Young Janet inhaled social justice aspirations along with her father’s cigarette smoke.

Though her father died in 1953 when Janet was fourteen, the efforts of family and friends made it possible for her to go to university. In 1959, she graduated with First Class honours in Philosophy, English and History from St. Michael’s College, receiving the Governor General’s Medal in English and the Cardinal Mercier Award in philosophy.

Early in her life, Janet made a conscious commitment to what was then a rarely acknowledged path: the lay vocation in the Church. After graduating from St. Michael’s, she joined the Grail, an international Catholic women’s movement. During the heady, early days of Vatican II, she was assistant editor for the Grail’s international publication in Holland.

While Janet was in Holland, her beloved mother Margaret fell gravely ill. Janet rushed home to care for her. It was 1963, and the ecumenical Toronto School of Theology was beginning to take shape on the University of Toronto campus. Lay people – no longer just seminarians – could now study theology. Janet enrolled in the new Faculty of Theology of St. Michael’s College, within the new TST, and set out to earn a master’s degree of theology. Janet became the first Roman Catholic laywoman in this country to earn a graduate degree in theology at TST.

In 1965, with her thesis completed and the degree earned, Janet was alerted by a friend to a new program being developed for CBC Radio. Its originators, Phyllis Webb and William A. Young, were looking for a producer for the five-evenings-a-week exploration of the contemporary intellectual scene. The program was given the name it still has, IDEAS. For the next five years, Janet worked enthusiastically with IDEAS. Highlights included assisting Glenn Gould as he created his massively innovative program The Idea of North in 1967, and that same year, producing the Massey Lectures by Martin Luther King. Janet’s passion and vision impressed Dr. King. Early in 1958, he called Janet and asked her to return to Atlanta to work for him as a speechwriter. She declined as she was the primary caregiver for her mother.

During those years, Janet often met in Brewster Kneen’s living room with a sort of ecumenical “house church” of people trying to understand the new challenges to faith and social justice that were beginning to come from Latin American “theology of liberation” and from other sources.

Janet’s experience working with Dr. King and what she described as “a close encounter with the story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus in Luke” led her to question her exclusive focus on the somewhat elite audience that CBC addressed. She chose to be involved in more explicit faith projects and to be more at the service of the poor. For a year, she worked at the Canadian Council of Churches on a contract to re-think their Office of Christian Vocation.

At that time, activists in many Canadian churches were launching new forms of faith-based engagement. Janet wanted to share in the intense church-based conversation about faith and justice. She began to “freelance” as a speaker, listener, and writer, helping people of faith to connect biblical themes and visions with social justice questions in Canada and in the world.

In 1981, she began her long involvement with Catholic New Times, the independent national Catholic newspaper which was then still in its infancy. As a senior editor, she became a most influential voice. shaping an editorial position which moved beyond the easy categories of left and right, liberal and conservative. Her genius as a writer was frequently recognized by various national and international press associations. Through this publication, she articulated the concerns of working people, and the tragedy of unemployment even as she sought out alternatives to business-as-usual economy.

Janet stepped back from her writing to focus on caring for her beloved mother, nursing her with gentleness and loving dedication. Margaret Somerville died peacefully, surrounded by love, in their shared apartment in 1984. Throughout the following years, Janet freelanced again, and then returned to Catholic New Times as an associate editor from 1991 to 1997.

In the decade of the 1990s, Canada’s Roman Catholic Bishops joined the Canadian Council of Churches. In 1997, the Council found itself searching for a new General Secretary. Janet, with her deep Catholic roots and her broad experiences of working in Protestant, was the first Roman Catholic, and the first woman, to receive this appointment. She served in that post until 2002.

Janet was honoured twice with doctoral degrees in theology honoris causa: the first time by Queen’s Theological College (United Church of Canada) in Kingston, and by Regis College (Roman Catholic, Jesuit) in the Toronto School of Theology. She also received the A.C. Forrest Memorial Award for excellence in religious journalism, First Place, in 1997; the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice (Papal Honour), in 1999. In 2004, Janet was invested in the Order of Canada by Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson. She received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012, and in 2017, the Dame Marjorie MacKinnon award for ecumenism from The Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem.

Janet retired to help her dearest friend Barbara Bouck raise Barb’s adoptive son George Bouck. She was a dedicated “honorary grandmother” to George up until his sudden death in 2021. Janet was a loving and patient caregiver for Barbara right up to the day Janet left her beloved Hugh Garner Co-op for a palliative care room at Hennick-Bridgepoint Hospital. Janet died of cancer on Sunday, April 16, at age 84, with her niece Margaret sitting by her side.

Janet’s greatest accomplishment lies in the loving impact that she had on those she met. Her ability to see the good in others, to love her neighbours (should they be the person next door, a chance-met stranger, or her nieces and nephews) was transformative. She listened attentively, responded thoughtfully, and had a gift for recognizing the gifts of others. She was generous with her compliments and spoke with sincerity. Her respect for truth and the spoken and written word would not let her be anything but honest. Her interactions with others gave them hope and courage. She was kind, generous, and both serious and light-hearted. She loved the family that she was born into, and the family that she chose – loved with a depth and delight that surely came through the grace of God.

In Paradisum deducant te angeli, Janet! Our hearts ache at losing you, even as we rejoice that your dearest wish – to see the face of God – has been granted.