Religion: The Wounds

Uptergrove, a one-store, two-church hamlet 86 miles north of Toronto, straddles Ontario Highway No. 12. Its 204 people are almost equally divided between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Both groups have known Mrs. Donald Mclsaac all her life. She was born Eva Baye, granddaughter of a full-blooded Indian brave on the nearby Huron reservation. As a dark, pretty girl with pigtails, she went to Fair Valley public school, later married Farmer Don Mclsaac and bore him eight children. Now a stout, cheerful woman of 48, she still works on the farm, does her own housework, looks after her husband and six surviving children.

Six days a week, Mrs. Mclsaac is much like any other small-town matron. But for three hours every Friday evening, for the past ten years, she has suffered ecstatic agonies. She bears the stigmata—wounds corresponding to those of the crucified Christ.

“Most Peculiar.” In the current Mac-Lean’s magazine, Frank Hamilton describes Mrs. Mclsaac as one of the most remarkable stigmatics in history. Says Hamilton: “Of the wounds’ existence there can be no doubt.” The first of Mrs. Mclsaac’s stigmata appeared in 1937—a small, painful sore on the back of her right hand. Over the next three years, other wounds developed. At the direction of James Cardinal McGuigan, Archbishop of Toronto, the church arranged for long, detailed examinations of Mrs. Mclsaac at two hospitals by Catholic, Protestant and Jewish doctors.

“The wounds are most peculiar,” reported a Protestant physician. “Those on the hands and feet are square. On the backs of the hands and on the insteps they are dark and slightly hard. On the palms and the soles they are somewhat smaller and rather reddish in color, and are covered with a sort of transparent tissue. The wound in the left side is deep, and shaped like a long, narrow diamond. On the head under the hairline there are numerous small wounds, mostly circular in shape. On the back there are several crosswise reddish marks, rather like lash marks.”

Ecstatic Trances. During her two hospital examinations, totaling five weeks, Mrs. Mclsaac was not left alone for a moment day or night. “The examining doctors made many tests . . . Blood smears “were taken during the Friday agonies and compared with blood smears made on other days. Another test had to do with the time the agonies begin and end—invariably 6 and 9 p.m. In this test the time was surreptitiously advanced 4½ hours. Mrs. Mclsaac had no clock or watch in her room, and her daily schedule and meals were altered to give her the impression that it was later than it was. But the agonies still began at 6 and ended at 9 by the right time.”

Said a Protestant doctor who took part in these examinations: “Mrs. Mclsaac was bright, lively and full of energy right up until late Friday afternoon. During the early part of the week she was in very good health despite the marks … On Friday afternoon the marks on her body began to lose their hardness, and towards 6 o’clock they appeared more like fresh wounds. It was apparent that she was beginning to feel pain . . . She appeared to lapse into a trance . . . Her pain seemed to intensify to agony . . . Soon a drop of blood began to form at one of the foot wounds . . . Gradually the hands and the other wounds began to bleed . . . Toward 9 o’clock the flow of blood stopped, the pain seemed to go, and she appeared to sleep normally . . . On Saturday morning she appeared surprisingly fresh and youthful-looking, and in very good health.”

Accepted Fact. During her three-hour ordeal, Mrs. Mclsaac goes into ecstatic trances. Afterward she describes her visions. A Catholic priest who has investigated them terms their details accurate as to background, architecture, dress, manners and language: “In the visions of the Passion, for instance, not only does she hear the vernacular of the time and place, Aramaic, but distinguishes between dialects of this tongue. She describes the . . . Roman eagles, fasces and other objects in very simple language but in great detail.”

The stigmata have not changed Mrs. Mclsaac’s life very much. She is sociable with her neighbors, but on Cardinal Mc-Guigan’s advice she avoids curiosity-seekers. Her eldest daughter recently graduated as a nurse. Her eldest son helps on the farm, and the other children are still in school. Financially, the family is as well fixed as before—but no better.

Not all the Catholics in Uptergrove believe that Mrs. Mclsaac’s stigmata are God-given. Not all the Protestants are doubters. Visitors are surprised at how calmly her neighbors take her. But as one villager said: “It isn’t as if it was something new. Been going on now for more than ten years. I guess we’ve just come to accept it as a fact and let it go at that.”