“Miss Mary Willis Blain, M.A., a graduate of the University of Toronto, studied also in Columbia University, and later graduated from the Department of Social Service in the University of Toronto. Hers was the trained intellect and the indomitable spirit and the passion for service that was master over a body physically impaired and often suffering. The passion of her years (if one human being can ever rightly interpret another) was service to those who seemed at least to have less opportunity than was hers by the gracious circumstances of home and environment and education. A student of social conditions with experience in community work, Miss Blain entered the [Presbyterian] Training Home because of her conviction that she could best serve through the church and as a deaconess. She graduated in 1924 and on appointment under the W.M.S. to the Silverthorn District,Toronto, she was designated there to the Deaconess Order by the Presbytery of Toronto in the autumn of 1925. To the work of Silverthorn and Harwood she gave herself without stint “In season and out of season.” Perhaps the work that was most insistent in her judgment was wise and rightly directed religious teaching for childhood and youth. To that she bent her energies with a passion to help enrich and enlarge opportunities of others.”

Memorial of Miss Mary Willis Blain, MA Prepared by United Church Training School Principal Jean MacDonald for 2^nd Annual Meeting of United Church of Canada Deaconess Order, 1927.