A Tour of the Madonna House Training Centre
Our Gift Shop, Book Shop and Pioneer Museum
The next stop on our tour is the Madonna House gift shop, where everything for sale is donated and all of the proceeds go to the poor. The gift shop has a wide variety of items, including antique glass, jewellery, china, silver, brass, Canadiana, and collectable sewing accessories such as buttons, lace, ribbon, fringe, tassels, and beaded handbags, hats, clothing, table linens and fabrics. There also are crafts for sale by Madonna House artists, which include paintings, candles, leathercraft, woodenware and items woven from the wool from our sheep.
The gift shop was opened in 1963. Catherine Doherty explains:
The idea started exceedingly small, maybe smaller than a mustard seed, but much more casually. When I was sorting donations, some sixth sense, or maybe an inspiration of Our Lady, made me very attentive to set aside pieces of jewellery, glassware, china, silverware, old books, old phonograph records, etc. I packed them away, then years later, the idea came to me that perhaps I could get all those nice antiques and semi-antiques out and build a few shelves to display them. I polished the silver, cleaned the jewellery, washed china and displayed them. Friends, summer guests and even tourists found their way to the little shop with a few shelves. To our immense, surprise, that first summer, we made about $900, to help pay for our first foreign mission.
About this time, we had been invited to open a mission in Pakistan, and we were begging money for it, so the idea of using this cash that came so providentially and unexpectedly for the mission was a natural. Our stock was constantly replaced and enlarged by some further donations. In the years that followed, our income from the shop continued.
Ever since then, the shelves have always been full. For every item sold, another has come in through donations. For more than 30 years, we have seen this miracle of hidden generosity. Thousands of people have passed through the shop each year to buy items, and through it all, the poor have been helped in many parts of the world.
As Catherine said, “The gift shop has the character of a ‘business,’ but it is no business at all, but really an apostolate, both of raising money for the poor, and an apostolate to the customers. To us come the young, the old and middle-aged. To each, we offer the wares that each ones wants. But frankly, we're traders of Christ — that is, he offers himself through us to those people.”
Just a few steps away from the Gift Shop is our Pioneer Museum. Opened in 1967, it houses an extensive Canadian collection, representative of life in this country's early days. The displays of hand-made tools, cobbler and farm implements, kitchenware and the hundreds of authentic artifacts from pioneer homes speak with pride of our ancestors' way of life. Built of 100-year-old logs (hand-hewn by experts in the Madawaska Valley), even the building itself is a colourful illustration of our rich pioneer heritage. Every item is the gift of a generous benefactor interesting in preserving the history of the valley.
The Madonna House wool shop is directly behind the museum. It houses products made from the wool of our own sheep. The wool is sheared from the sheep on our farm, then washed, carded and made ready by our staff in the simple, old-fashioned ways of our pioneers. We have wool rovings for spinners and dyers, handmade wool-filled quilts and batts of wool for making quilts. Hand-woven rugs, scarves, mitts and other items are also available.
The Madonna House used book shop is just across the parking lot, and is a treasure trove for thousands of donated books that are for sale. A wide range of subjects are included in the book shop collection.
For more information about our shops, visit the Madonna House Gift Shop web page.
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