File 10 - Notes: Visitation to the Mission in Guyana, 1957

Born on September 5, 1908 to Joseph and Mary McQuaid Tom was ordained a priest by James Cardinal McGuigan on December 17, 1939. In 1940 he went to China and attended language school in Peking. From 1943 to 1945 he was interned along with two other religious by the Japanese. In November, 1945 he was released and went to Lishui, China where he served until 1947 when he returned to Canada to be vice rector of the seminary. At the Second General Chapter convened in 1949 Fr. McQuaid was elected superior general and remained in that post until 1959. From 1959 to 1966 he served as novice master at Nazareth House in St. Mary’s, Ontario.

In 1966 he was assigned to the Caribbean. He first arrived in St. Lucia where he worked as assistant parish priest of La Clery, with Fr, John Kelly, S.F.M. as parish priest. He spent one year there before being transferred to St. Vincent. However, in 1969 he returned to St. Lucia to take up the post of parish priest at La Clery. During his tenure of office he built the presbytery, the belfry of the church and bought the bells and had them placed. In 1976 Fr. McQuaid retired as parish priest and was appointed Chaplain to the Benedictine nuns. In 1981, Archbishop Kelvin Felix appointed him Chaplain of both the Vocational School and the Marian Home for the Aged, where he remained until his departure for Canada on April 15, 1989.

For several years he gave religious instruction at the Vocational School, R.C. School and St. Mary’s College. Fr. McQuaid later took over the duties of celebrating mass at the jail as well as at Victoria and Golden Hope Hospital. In 1989, Fr. McQuaid retired to Canada. For the last seven years of his life Tom lived with the Brothers of the Christian Schools at La Salle Manor.

Fr. McQuaid passed away on October 27th, 2003 and is interred at Mary, Queen of Angels cemetery located on the grounds of St. Augustine’s seminary.