The strength and spirit of Mother Bonaventure is evident throughout Ballarat. Known as ‘The Builder’, where Mother Bonaventure saw a need, she found a way to build a solution.

Born in 1888, Eileen Mary Healy, along with her sisters Kathleen, Josephine and Gertrude, was herself educated at Sacred Heart College before gaining a Diploma of Music and Diploma of Education at Melbourne University. Then at the age of twenty, she returned to Ballarat where she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Mercy and was professed three years later. All four sisters were particularly talented musicians and each left a lasting legacy on the College.

Mother Bonaventure’s many building projects included the development of Patrician House, a hostel for undergraduates of the (then) Aquin Teachers Training College, construction of many buildings at Sacred Heart College, four Ballarat primary schools and convents and schools in 13 other regional areas. When she decided that sporting facilities at Sacred Heart College were lacking, Mother Bonaventure planned a nine-hole golf course on unused land at Mount Xavier – the first public golf course to be built and owned by a convent. This was opened in 1949 and was well-used by Sacred Heart girls. In the early days of the Ballarat East Sisters of Mercy, ‘walking nuns’ would visit the sick and poor in their homes. Mother Bonaventure systemised this relief effort, which led her to inaugurate the Mercy Home Care and Nursing Service – an early version of the Mercy Health and Community Services we know today.

Perhaps the most well-known to us of Mother Bonaventure’s projects is the beautiful piece of land upon which Damascus College currently resides. By 1959, Sacred Heart College was bursting at the seams and Mother Bonaventure was dreaming of a spacious, modern senior school to meet the challenge of over-crowding. Land bequeathed to the Sisters in 1960 enabled this dream to become a reality, and Mother Bonaventure was involved in everything from planning to turning the first sod and laying the foundation stone. Her fervent prayers to St. Martin de Porres for the successful completion of the new school are reflected in the beautiful statue which now stands in the St. Martin’s Resource Centre. Sadly Mother Bonaventure died in 1966 before seeing the first students arrive at the Senior College, however she leaves us this wonderful place of beauty and learning.