Sisters of St. Martha look to keep legacy alive in city

By Lethbridge Herald on July 29, 2025.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald

The Sisters of St. Martha are celebrating their 125th anniversary and the many contributions they have made to communities across Canada, including Lethbridge, where they served for more than 90 years. 

The Sisters of St. Martha’s Congregation was founded in Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 1900 and its legacy lives on in Lethbridge by multiple contributions that have been passed on to other organizations. One still remains under their care and property, the Martha Retreat Centre. 

Diana Sim, executive director of the Martha Retreat Centre Society, says that beginning today, the Sisters of St. Martha will be celebrating their big milestone for an entire year. 

The Sisters are highlighting all the work they have done within those 125 years across Canada, which will include a visit to Lethbridge in September from Sister Jovita MacPherson, who was a chaplain at Catholic Central High School for many years, to celebrate the creation and continued work done at the Martha Retreat Centre. 

“The centre was developed first as a novitiate for young women who wanted to become nuns in 1967 but that didn’t really take off, but since the beginning the centre has evolved to serve the needs of the people and the community,” says Sim. 

When the novitiate did not work out, the centre shifted to offering retreats, with the first one taking place in 1974, beginning with priests, various orders of nuns and clergy and later the retreat centre was opened to the public for retreats. 

“When the Sisters left Lethbridge in July 2019, they left the centre in the operational care of the Martha Retreat Centre Society,” says Sim. “They helped create a board of directors and to get a charitable status.”

The goal of the society is to continue the Sisters’ ministry in the community for years to come, but to be able to do so, they need help from anyone who has been touched by the Sisters’ legacy in one way or another. 

“We are looking at honouring the Sisters on their 125-year anniversary with a 1-2-5 campaign, and we are asking anyone who has been touched by their legacy to donate $125 in honour of their work to the Martha Retreat Centre Society,” says Sim. “The sisters have the intention of donating the property and the centre to the society by August of 2026 but have asked us to have $1 million in the bank or in pledges by February 2026, to demonstrate the future sustainability of the centre.”

The campaign will help them demonstrate to the Sisters of St. Martha that the society has the community’s support to receive their gift. 

Sim expands on the many ways the Sisters have touched the Lethbridge community and surrounding areas, and shares that the sisters first came to Lethbridge in 1928, invited by Bishop T.J. Kidd of Calgary to take over the Van Haarlem hospital. 

“While they were here working at the Van Haarlem hospital, they saw the need for a new hospital in our community, and they worked towards building the St. Michael’s hospital.”

She adds that along with that, the sisters were also involved with education and social services and played a role in the formation of what is now known as the Holy Spirit Catholic School Division.

Since the Sisters’ involvement with the community continues to be felt through the various legacy services provided not only by the school division but also by the St. Michael’s Health Centre, Sim hopes that those touched by those services within the community will help the last piece of their legacy to continue within the Martha Retreat Centre. 

“So many residents went to classes where nuns were teachers in Lethbridge and surrounding areas, that we hope they can help us contribute to the future of the centre, which is also part of the Sisters’ legacy.”

Many people believed that when the Sisters left Lethbridge in 2019, the retreat centre closed. In fact, the temporary closure was due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the government regulations that came with it, but even then the centre found ways to continue to offer community members some programming that comply within the regulations established at the time. 

“We recently planted the Contemplative Food Garden, and people came by asking about the centre as they thought it was closed,” says Sim. “But a lot of growth has happened since they left.”

The garden also serves as a symbol of continued growth and what the goal is for the centre as the sisters planted the seeds, the started the centre but it has grown into what it is now. 

“There has been a lot of life inspired by that garden, so it is symbolic in a way that new seeds have been planted, new growth has happened, and there are continued blossoms and fruitfulness of what the sisters started here in the Martha Retreat Centre many years ago,” says Sim.