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- OBITUARY:
July 1934
MICHAEL P. DRISCOLL
His many friends throughout Prince Country were shocked and surprised to hear of the death, on Friday morning, June 29, of Michael P. Driscoll at his home in Summerside, P.E.I., after five weeks’ illness. Mr.Driscoll was well and favorably known to the traveling public, having been a C.N.R. Station Agent at the Freetown Station for 37 years, and was held in high favor with the C.N.R. management. About five years ago, owing to ill health, he retired from active service, removing to Summerside with his family, where he has since resided. He was in his 65th year, a good Christian man, and devout Catholic, receiving the last rites of Holy Mother Church in his last hours from Rev.Bennet McDonald, who was with him frequently during his last illness. He was born in Cape Traverse, P.E.I., and was the son of the late John Driscoll and Mary Deegan. He leaves to mourn the loss of a kind husband and devoted father, his widow Georgenia McIvor, two sons and seven daughters. Namely: John S., teacher in this Province; Lorne, a student at St.Dunstan’s University, Charlottetown; Kathleen, Georgenia, Florence, and Katherine, at home; Emily (Mrs.Cecil Monaghan), Trail, BC; Mary (Sr.St.Georgetta), St.Paul, Minn., and Marion, also in Trail, B.C., (Sister Georgetta and Marion were unable to be with their father before his death). He leaves also three sisters, Mrs.V.J.Harrington, Summerside; Mrs.John F.O’Connor, Carleton, and Mrs.James Mulligan, Cape Traverse, as well as three grandchildren, children of Mr. and Mrs.Cecil Monaghan, Trail.
The funeral took place from his residence in Summerside to St.Malachi’s Church, Kinkora, where burial mass was celebrated by Rev.M.Smith, after which all that was mortal of a loyal friend and upright citizen, was laid to rest beside his first born son, Willie Driscoll. The pall-bearers were: Hon. A.E.McLean, M.P., Wm.Noonan, A.A.Scales, E.P.Foley, T.L.Compton, and William Deegan.
Sorrow for the dead seems to be the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget, but this wound we consider a duty to keep open. These words aptly describe the tie of melancholy affection that binds us to our beloved dead, though gone from us by death we fancy that we can hear the gentle fall of their muffled footsteps as they silently glide along the hallowed halls of memory, and in our hearts we build a shrine wherein we inscribe their names, and to which we go from worldly distractions to live once more amid the scenes made memorable by their presence. There we love to recall their presence. There we love to recall their virtues, or to hear again their kindly voices now stilled in death; till our hearts grow tender, and our tears fall anew, until we realize what a hollow mockery is all our musing, for it cannot bring back the friend we have lost. Those thoughts bring back in reminiscence the form and face of our dear departed friend, M.P.Driscoll, His faults, if faults he had, have gone the way of oblivion, while his many excellent traits of character stand forth in high relief from the well filled background of affectionate memory.
He was a man of simple and strong faith who never made an unnecessary parade of his religious convictions. In the last days of his illness death seemed to hold no terrors for him, but with the faith of the Catholic gentleman that he was, he settled all his worldly affairs, with hope and confidence in a merciful Judge, and when the end at last came it was with a touch so gentle that his family and friend who knelt beside his dying beside scarcely knew his soul had taken flight. He had passed into another state of existence, and then we realize that: "Between us and you there is a fixed chaos, so that they who would pass from hence to you, cannot, nor from thence come hither."
We may ask, "If in that moment of dissolution, did he retain an impression of the eager love that strove to keep him with us?" Who knows?
V.J.Harrington.
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McIverPEIAncestry.ca Electronic Family Tree
1869 - 1934 (65 years)
