After years of travelling abroad as a missionary, Shawn Daley has returned to his native province of New Brunswick and is excited to be part of the St. Thomas University community as the new chaplain and a professor.
“It’s great to be around, well, it’s like a nuclear reactor. All these people, so young and so eager to learn … They’re all just here in hope,” said Daley. “So it’s nice to be part of that atmosphere of hope.”
Born in Saint John, Daley lived in New Brunswick until he was 18. After graduating high school, he entered the monastery in Rogersville, Que. He remained there as a monk until 2004, receiving a degree as a technician in agriculture as well as studying theology and philosophy through the Studium Monasticum and the Université de Laval. Daley also had the opportunity to study in Paris, where he received a Canonical Licentiate from l’Institut Catholique de Paris.
“I saw a lot of things in Paris, a lot of different cultures and people invited me to their countries,” he said of his time there.
After his studies in Paris, Daley received invitations from countries to travel abroad as a missionary. His work brought him to places across the globe such as Africa, Thailand, Australia and the Dominican Republic.
“Seeing how happy people are with so little just makes you always appreciative,” he said of his favourite part of his mission work. “We all have more than we need, really.”
Eventually, he left the monastery to live in the Dominican Republic for over six years. Of all his travels, he spent the majority of his time there, teaching religion as well as English and French as second languages. But his degree as a technician in agriculture also served him well as he spent a lot of time in hands-on community projects, such as installing water filtration systems, building a community centre, library and computer centre.
“There’s no electricity there, not very much, only eight hours a day of electricity, so I had to build a big battery bank to run the computers.”
He returned to Canada to live in Toronto at the Scarborough House for two years, where he was ordained. He resumed his work as a missionary before taking a compassionate leave to return to New Brunswick and care for his parents a year-and-a-half ago.
“Because I was blessed and got a lot of education and I’ve been in academic circles my whole life, I wanted to try to teach.”
While he’s unsure of which Catholic studies courses he might teach in the future, he hopes to be able to teach liberation in the eyes of St. Paul. As both chaplain and a professor, he hopes to be a bridge to STU community. He said we often tend to set up different categories for parts of our lives, such as religiosity and secularity, but that by living in either extreme, we will miss pieces of life’s mystery.
“If we can all be bridge-builders, people can see that the religious eyes, the eyes that see the transcendence, can offer something to the eyes that only see pure eminence.”
