Mary van Veen
Mary van Veen remembers the moment she became a dedicated pro-life activist. She was attending the 1970 national Catholic Women’s League conference in Toronto, when Louise Summerhill took the podium and delivered a passionate speech. Summerhill spoke about Pierre Trudeau’s 1969 omnibus bill decriminalizing abortion and how Christians must reach out to women contemplating abortion. Summerhill had helped found Birthright for this very reason.
Inspired by the story and appalled that children were being aborted in Canada, van Veen returned home to Woodstock, in southwestern Ontario. There, she and her husband, Harry Schadenberg, arranged for a pro-life speaker to visit the small community and talk about abortion’s spread to Canada.
Despite a raging snowstorm on a cold February night in 1971, 100 people showed up to listen to a speaker recommended by Summerhill. Van Veen invited the doctor to return to Woodstock and give his presentation in local schools. “I’ll send you a handbook with all the information you need,” he replied. “You are going to go to the schools and speak.”
The following August, the priest at Schadenberg’s church left on a month-long retreat. He invited Fr. Mike Dalton, a World War II hero, to replace him during the absence. After church one Sunday, Dalton invited himself over to the Schadenberg’s home and handed the couple a check for $500. It was his stipend for filling in. “You are going to start a pro-life organization in Woodstock,” he told the couple.
The Schadenbergs found themselves thrust into the role of pro-life activists and organizers. These were roles the couple would share until Harry’s sudden death in 1986. Mary, a devout Catholic and mother of five, says her parents deeply valued life and family. “My mother was my mentor as a pro-lifer,” she told The Interim. “She was six months pregnant with her ninth child when my father died. After that, she raised us alone as a single mother.”
Although most people in their community were pro-life, van Veen felt it important to establish a local pro-life presence. There was always a danger that young people could seek an abortion in the nearby cities of Toronto or London. “I felt we couldn’t just think of today,” she said. “We had to think of the future, which is why I focused on local schools.” Thus, the couple founded Woodstock Right to Life.
Van Veen would often bring her infant children to her pro-life speaking engagements. A teacher at one school asked her whether it would easier to hire a babysitter. The students should know what a real baby looks like, van Veen answered. “I wanted the students to see that abortion takes the lives of real babies.”
Besides speaking in schools, Woodstock Right to Life sponsored information booths at local fairs. Members of the organization wrote letters to the editor of the Woodstock Sentinel Review and provided speakers to local organizations interested in pro-life issues. Other activities included starting and editing a newsletter, hosting pro-life family evenings and barbecues.
The Schadenbergs also helped unwed mothers and young women struggling with the difficulties of motherhood. “If we got a call from an unwed mother that she needed baby food, mom and dad hopped in the car and went over with a care package,” said Alex Schadenberg, Mary’s son, who today is well known in pro-life circles as the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
The couple also became active within the pro-life movement at regional and national levels. Harry helped found Alliance for Life Canada and served as its vice-president. He would travel to pro-life conferences and represent the movement nationally, while Mary tended to the couple’s home, family and the needs of Woodstock Right to Life.
“He was furthering the national pro-life movement, while I was looking after it locally as president and then executive director,” van Veen said, adding that as her children grew older, she began to take on a more regional role, overseeing pro-life activity in southwestern Ontario.
“There was always something pro-life going on our household,” says Alex Schadenberg. “Mom was the originator of the pro-life walk-a-thon.”
In 1975, she organized the first pro-life walk-a-thon in Woodstock. It was the need to raise money for the pro-life movement that inspired her. She developed a handbook that she then shared with other local pro-life organizations across the country, describing how to raise money through walk-a-thons.
After Harry’s death, van Veen remarried twice. Both marriages were to strong pro-life activists and both marriages also lasted until each husband’s death.
Thirty-nine years after she first picked up the pro-life banner in Woodstock, van Veen feels that it is important pro-lifers remain active in their families, churches and communities. The abortion rate is no different among churchgoers from what it is among non-churchgoers, she stated. Speaking of her own family, she is especially proud of son Alex’s work in continuing the family’s commitment to the culture of life.
“I ask everyone in the pro-life movement to pray for him, his family and his work in preventing euthanasia,” she said.
