Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Donnelly Hart has made an effort to give back not just within her own backyard of Jasper but in a land far south and far warmer.
Born in 1952, Hart grew up in Calgary as a middle child of six children, having two sisters and three brothers.
Her mother Betty Ogle had not been well when they were growing up, while her father Rusty had been busy running the corner grocery store, so Hart helped out by looking after her siblings.
“I needed to accept a lot of responsibility when I was young,” Hart said.
“(My mom) used to think I kind of missed out on some of my childhood but I never saw it that way. I always just thought it was great skills to learn and the younger, the better.”
At around the age of 12, Hart taught herself to sew and continued to improve over the years and work on more challenging projects.
After graduating from St. Francis High School, Hart went to Ryerson University in Toronto for a year in fashion design but decided not to continue.
“I just realized that as a designer it wasn’t for me but I always continued to have a real interest in sewing,” she said.
Hart then got a job at Shell Oil in Calgary and stuck with this for about two years until she had her first encounter with Jasper.
She had gone up with a friend for a short holiday where they stayed at Jasper Park Lodge, the first year it was open in the winter, and spent their time skiing.
“Then we promptly went back and quit our very good-paying jobs and moved to Jasper to be cocktail waitresses,” Hart said.
“I started skiing when I was really young and so I love skiing and I don’t think I was ever really meant to live in a big city.”
Hart moved to the mountain town in 1972.
She briefly returned to Calgary in 1975 to work in fashion design for a couple of years but missed Jasper and later went back.
In 1978, she married a local named Danny, who worked for CN in the car repair department until his retirement, and had two children with him – Paul in 1981 and Carleen in 1985.
Hart described raising children in Jasper as both easy and wonderful, noting the “terrific school system” and the opportunities for sports activities, her son Paul playing hockey right up until he was 18 years old when he went off to university.
Along with the usual duties of being a parent, Hart ran a children’s sewing school for 13 years where she taught over 225 young students.
“It was a great thing to do, it was fun and kids learnt so that was good too,” she said.
After Hart was finished with the sewing school and her children were off to university, she began looking for something else to devote herself too.
That was when she discovered her next project in Guatemala.
“A friend of ours, who used to live in Jasper, had gone down to Guatemala and had done a little bit of volunteer work with an organization that helped families who worked in the Guatemala City garbage dump,” Hart said.
Hart contacted the organization, Camino Seguro, to offer her sewing skills.
When they accepted, Hart travelled with two sewing machines and 125 metres of fabric to Guatemala in 2006 where she taught sewing in an orphanage for several months.
“It was a real lifechanging experience,” she said.
Hart wasn’t able to go back to Camino Seguro as the director of the school died in a car accident and the organization required reshuffling that following year.
She continued her teaching in the small rural community of Alotenango, about an hour-and-a-half drive from the capital.
Two years later, she partnered with a local school named Bendicion de Dios to bring vocational training such as sewing and cooking.
“Every year, I would go down and teach the teachers more of the program and they would teach it throughout the school year,” Hart said.
“We would also teach to mothers and young people who were no longer in school, and the goal was to offer them some kind of vocational training, something that they would be able to use to try and get jobs.”
In 2017, Hart formed a non-profit organization called the Wisehart Charity and continued to work with Bendicion de Dios.
They also managed to build a vocational school, supported in part by residents in Jasper.
Hart described how she enjoyed working with the school and families as well as the scenery of the Guatemalan Highlands.
“The people are just beautiful,” Hart said.
“They just want the same thing that everyone else wants, (which) is to be safe and raise their children and try to provide them with a half-decent life.”
Nevertheless, it remains challenging work as Guatemala must deal with poverty, crime and corruption, making it hard for the people to get ahead.
The COVID-19 pandemic has added to these obstacles.
“Right now, COVID has been a pretty big problem down there and the school has been closed since March of 2020,” Hart said.
Since the start of the pandemic, the Wisehart Charity and the Rotary Club of Jasper have supported a food hamper program on a monthly basis for the 287 families with Bendicion de Dios.
“For some families, (the food hampers) might be the only support that they have because they’re not making any income right now,” Hart said.
Online learning is not an option for students at Bendicion de Dios due to Guatemala having limited Internet access.
The school is now supporting staff at a reduced rate and carrying on teaching through the use of work pamphlets so students learn at home.
“But it’s hard because a lot of parents aren’t very educated, so it’s a difficult thing to try to be helping their children at home when they themselves may not even be able to do that,” Hart said.
“They’re doing their best. They’re doing what they can down there.”
Although Hart had gone to Guatemala on an annual basis for over a decade, she wasn’t able to return in 2020 due to COVID-19 and likely won’t be able to go this year.
“But we have continued to support and we have a very good partnership with Bendicion de Dios,” she said.
“The people of the school know that they haven’t been abandoned.”
Those who wish to donate to the Wisehart Charity can do so by mail at Box 482 or donate online at www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/the-wisehart-charity.
