Dan O’Connor and Sharon Fraser
When I moved back to Halifax in 1986, I bought a house on Clyde Street, just shouting distance from Saint Mary’s Basilica. Less than two years later, my garden apartment tenant Sharon Fraser and I agreed to marry in the Catholic church.
Though Sharon had been raised in the United Church, we started attending Mass together at the Basilica, and I made an appointment to see Monsignor O’Driscoll about getting married there. We had been warned to expect months of marriage preparation.
The Monsignor welcomed me warmly. When I told him Sharon and I wanted a small wedding, he offered us the Glebe House chapel for an early evening wedding on Thursday, May 26. I continued home, met Sharon and told her we were getting married in five weeks less a day.
As you may know, the Glebe chapel had just enough room for Monsignor O’Driscoll, Sharon, me, her sister, my mother and brother, plus a friend to take photos. It was a lovely service. Monsignor knew Sharon was a feminist and added some extra touches to the service that recognized the importance of Mary and women in the church. Afterward, he joined us for a family dinner with nearly 20 people at the Five Fishermen. The next day, we held an open house that spilled onto the sidewalk and the back deck for everyone we knew.
The entire experience put into action a frequent theme of Monsignor O’Driscoll’s sermons: affirmation of others.
When Sharon and I adopted our newborn son in December of 1994, Monsignor suggested that he be baptised on Easter Sunday. He joined us on Easter Sunday to baptise our son, William, along with many of the same people who had attended our wedding six years earlier.
The Basilica holds many memories of our infant son, wrapped warmly, two pews away from the Ambo, sleeping through midnight Mass a few weeks after his birth; tucked in and sleeping through the Good Friday service and, 21 years later, accompanying his grandmother to her first Easter Sunday Mass in Nova Scotia after more than 60 years living in Ontario.
- Dan O’Connor and Sharon Fraser
Halifax, NS