Loretta Leonard Shaw

Loretta Leonard Shaw was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, one of the eight children of Arthur Neville Shaw and Margaret Elizabeth Hilyard Shaw. Her father was a carriage manufacturer.[1] She studied modern languages and graduated from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton in 1894. She trained as a teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[2]

Shaw taught school in the Boston area for a few years after earning her teaching credentials.[3] In 1904, she was accepted as a missionary by Church Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada,[4] and became a teacher at the Bishop Poole Girls' School in Osaka, Japan,[5][6][7] where she taught from 1905 to 1919, and from 1923 to 1932. She wrote about her work for Canadian church publications, and in a book, Japan in Transition (1922).[8] She was a delegate to the World's Sunday School Convention in Oslo in 1936.[9] She toured in Canada during furlough leaves, speaking on Japan.[10]

Shaw donated hundreds of Japanese objects, including clothing, coins, dolls, toys, and photographs, for display in Canada, and many are now in the collection of the New Brunswick Museum.[11][12] In 1932, she left teaching to work at the Christian Literature Society of Japan, overseeing the publication of books for women and children.[2] In that work, she is credited with bringing Anne of Green Gables to the attention of translator Hanako Muraoka, whose translation Akage no An (1952) became a favorite of Japanese readers for generations.[1][13][14]

Shaw returned to Canada in 1939, and she died from cancer in 1940, at her sister's home in Saint John, ten days after her 68th birthday.[9][11][15] "She was always keen to strengthen what was weak, right what was wrong," recalled a colleague in 1941. "She was an ideal friend, faithful, true, and understanding, with strong and deep affection."[16]