‘Understanding the complexity of a broken world’: Welland high school embarking on 50th pilgrimage

Nina Koniuch cherishes her memory of carrying a banner to lead hundreds of her classmates during their procession on a fall day in 1975.

They walked through the streets of Welland and crossed the Allanburg Bridge into Thorold, before heading back to Notre Dame College School to celebrate mass.

They covered more than 20 kilometres while participating in that first pilgrimage.

Koniuch, then a Grade 9 student known as Nina Ventresca, says she was asked to carry the banner by Rev. Jim Mulligan, a Notre Dame teacher who started the tradition.

She says Mulligan, who died in 2022 at age 80, “got everyone involved in it with the school.”

“It was something they really promoted. It was going to be a fun event to spend time with your friends with some singing, some prayers, some exercise,” says