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SYDNEY, N.S.

When Allene MacPherson Goforth graduated from St. Francis Xavier in 1965, she became the first deaf woman in Canada to earn a university degree.

However, when the Cape Breton native is inducted into the St. FX Hall of Honour in Antigonish today, she’s looking forward to listening to the bagpipes as she makes her entrance.

“On Saturday, I and two others will be piped into the auditorium at St. FX by my sister, pipe major Janette MacPherson Gillis, and I’ll be able to hear her play the pipes. How cool is that?” Goforth, 75, told the Cape Breton Post by email this week.

Until she received the first of four cochlear implants in 1989 — she now has bilateral implants — Goforth hadn’t been able to hear anything for nearly 40 years. She contracted tuberculosis meningitis at age seven. She was transferred from Sydney City Hospital to Point Edward Hospital, so she could be treated with streptomycin. The antibiotic saved her life but took away her hearing for the next 38 years. It also engendered a lifelong love for reading and learning that has in many ways shaped her life.

During her long stay in hospital, the then-eight-year-old was told she would never hear again, but recalls being more concerned about getting well enough to go home.

“I was there for 14 months. I had a hunger for learning, so I was given some of the textbooks to read as soon as I was well enough to do so,” said Goforth, who grew up in Portage, about 20 kilometres west of Sydney, and now lives in Viola, Idaho, with her husband, Edward Goforth.

“One of the first things I did after getting out of the hospital was to ask my mother to take me to the library so I could get a card and borrow books.”

Goforth, the eldest of John Alexander MacPherson and Isabel (MacAdam) MacPherson’s seven children, was homeschooled for a couple of years until she was admitted to the Halifax School for the Deaf in September 1953.

It was “a rather surreal situation,” she said.

“I could speak and read and write beyond the level of even a normal hearing child. All the reading I’d been doing during the waiting period had served me well, but nobody there knew it. I was placed in the beginner class with younger children and when the class was told to write down the numbers from one to 10, I made sure to far exceed that request.

“I was transferred to an intermediate class soon after that. The children there were around my own age, but I was way ahead of them in language skills because I wasn’t born deaf like they were.

“Fortunately, I had a wonderful teacher who understood my situation and encouraged me to read at my own level. I ended up in a senior class, where I also was further ahead of the class. I ended up graduating from the school when I was 13 years old.”

Goforth went from the Halifax School for the Deaf into Grade 8 at MacCormack School in East Bay where she was generally treated like any other student.

“I sat in class with everybody else, read my textbooks, did my homework, etc. I couldn’t learn spelling the way the others did, but I was already a very good speller because of all that reading. I also couldn’t learn to speak French, so they graded me on the reading and writing. I had to do better on that to make up for not learning to speak it. I struggled with math a bit because I was a language person, not a math person. By the time I was 14, I was reading Dickens for fun. I had friends at school who used finger spelling to communicate with me. Later on, I became a very good lip-reader.”

Goforth also excelled at Holy Angels High School and she was awarded a scholarship to attend college. At St. FX, other students shared their notes, but Goforth was otherwise a typical university student.

“I’d already spent four years as the only deaf student in school, so doing the same thing at St. FX didn’t faze me at all,” she said. “I came there and jumped right in. I made lots of friends, went to all the dances on weekends, had boyfriends, and just behaved like anyone else. I was tremendously excited to be going to college. I asked the students to let me sit by them and copy their notes. I don’t remember anyone turning me down. I did the same work the rest of the class did, except in my final year, I was excused from the requirement to go out to the public schools to do practice teaching.”

Friend and classmate Jane Barry nominated Goforth for the St. FX Hall of Honour. The former New Brunswick MLA said Goforth fit in so well that most people didn’t realize she was deaf.

“I had no idea she had no hearing at all because she integrated so well into campus life,” said Barry, née Baird, who will be travelling from Rothesay, N.B., to Antigonish for the ceremony, which takes place at 11 a.m. today in the Schwartz Auditorium. Alumni are contributing to the Class of ’65 Scholarship/Bursary Fund in Goforth’s honour to mark the occasion.

“She was very cheerful, friendly and interacted well with others, although now in hindsight I realize how difficult it must have been.”

In fact, Goforth blended in so seamlessly that by the time she completed her bachelor of science in home economics, the magnitude of her history-making accomplishment went largely unnoticed.

And that was fine by Goforth, who was told shortly before graduation by one of the nuns at Mount St. Bernard that they’d just found out she’d be the first deaf woman to graduate from university in Canada.

“I said something along the lines of, ‘Oh, really?’ Then I asked where the deaf man who preceded me had gone to university. She didn’t know, so I thanked her and went on my way. After the graduation ceremony, (dean of science) Dr. J. J. MacDonald came up to me outside and congratulated me and told me I was unique and that he’d considered telling the audience about my accomplishment, but didn’t want to do it without my permission. I smiled and thanked him and went on my way. I have never been a limelight seeker.”

Barry said her friend deserves the recognition, even if it is more than 50 years after the fact. She shared Goforth’s story on a national inventory of Canadian women’s firsts and was surprised to learn her achievement had never been publicized.

“I believe an entire community benefits from becoming aware of one of their own who has made special achievements and received recognition. We are all better for it. So that is why I felt Allene’s story was special and would be newsworthy.”

Following, graduation, Goforth went to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto for a yearlong dietetic internship, then worked at the Halifax Infirmary Hospital and St. Martha’s Hospital in Antigonish before leaving for the United States in 1968.

In the U.S. she worked at New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston before changing careers and, not surprisingly, embracing her love for reading. She received her undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech and then went on to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a master’s degree in library science.

She spent most of her working life in libraries and library-related companies in Virginia, North Carolina and Salt Lake City, Utah. When her husband Edward Goforth retired, they moved to Viola, Idaho, where she worked as a copy editor for scholarly journal publishers until she retired her red pen in 2006.

Goforth’s time at St. FX did serve to inspire at least a few future X-ring wearers. Her siblings John, Rita, Janette, Grace, Donald and Ann all followed in their older sister’s footsteps and graduated from the university.

“My years at St. FX were absolutely wonderful. I loved that place, am still in touch with some of my old classmates, and I cried when I had to leave.”

BIOBOX

Allene MacPherson Goforth

Age: 75

Birthplace: Portage

Resides: Viola, Idaho

Family: Parents Alexander MacPherson and Isabel (MacAdam) MacPherson; siblings John, Rita, Janette, Grace, Donald and Ann; husband Edward Goforth

Notable accomplishment: First deaf woman in Canada to earn a university degree

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