Founding Sisters
Founding Sisters 1911,
St Aloysius College Archives
Sr Evangelist Vian
1849 – 1928
Elsearina Vian was born in the Basque country between France and Spain on 28 July 1849 and migrated to Argentina with her parents while still a child. She entered the Sisters of Mercy in Buenos Aires in 1871, was professed in that community in 1873 and took the religious name Evangelist. In 1880, she accompanied the group of twenty-four Sisters of Mercy to Adelaide.
Carmel Bourke former boarder and later St Aloysius College Principal (1945-1953) knew her well and wrote about her:
Sr Evangelist Vian was a quite unique member of the pioneer group of Sisters. Being Basque, she was half-French, half-Spanish, and spoke both languages fluently but with a peculiar accent.
She was a member of the teaching staff at St Aloysius College where she taught sewing and advanced needlework, as well as teaching French to the Senior Public and Higher Public examination students.
According to Carmel Bourke:
She was elderly when I knew her, but still an active, if idiosyncratic member of staff. She continued teaching until near the end of her life in 1928, at the age of 79. For many reasons, Sr Evangelist was probably more of an exile than any other of her pioneer companions and found it hard to adjust to Australian girls, but ‘Vange’ held a special place in our affectionate regard.
Other students’ memories are mentioned by McLay (ed. 1996, p. 111)
‘She was not a conventional teacher and many of her pupils labelled her ‘a darling’.
She was not a conventional teacher and many of her pupils labelled her ‘a darling’. Very gifted and very eccentric, her uncertain English did not lead to good discipline, and she found it hard to adjust to Australian girls. She was near-sighted and she would bring the article of sewing right up to her nose. She would say: ‘I have not the sight, but I have the hearing’ (or ‘the nose’). At times, while she took sewing classes, another sister would sit on the rostrum and read to the class in an effort to maintain good order.
Her death notice described her as ‘a polished lady in mien and manner, artless yet highly cultured, natural yet possessing the graces of one trained to move in high society… she was ‘a dear little French nun whom we all loved’.
Sr Evangelist Vian died on 26 April 1928 aged seventy-eight and is buried in the West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide.
Compiled by Sr Mary-Anne Duigan
Edited by Jacqui Jury, Deputy Principal (Teaching & Learning) 2024
References
Bourke, C. (1991). Some early recollections of Angas Street (from 1920 to 1954). St Aloysius College.
McLay, A. (1996). Women on the move: Mercy’s Triple Spiral. Sisters of Mercy Adelaide.
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