Olwyn Joan Holland, OBE 1929 - 2015
Principal of St. Cuthbert’s College for Girls, 1969 - 1989
Joan Holland was a strong, caring, and dedicated educator, the first New Zealand woman to be Principal of St Cuthbert’s College, Auckland. She was a charismatic teacher and leader, known for her wicked sense of humour–a junior pupil renamed her the ‘head-mischief’.
She felt deeply the importance of giving Maori an education that was “satisfying and successful”, acknowledging that problems arose, “because we want Maori to do things our way. We need to restore for our insensitivity and do better,” she said.
In 1988 Joan led a party of 29 students from NZ and the Pacific on Project Redirection, to India. They took part in an Asian Youth Conference at Asia Plateau, Maharashtra, joined a re-afforestation project, were received by Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and NZ High Commissioner, Sir Edmund Hillary, cared for destitute children in a Ryder-Cheshire centre, and spent several days with the sisters and patients of Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying in Calcutta.
Joan was a supportive presence in Caux, Switzerland when the Maori Queen, Dame Te Atairangikaahu with her husband and daughter, and Joan Bolger, wife of the Prime Minister, visited in 1997 to attend the conference, ‘Healing the Past and Forging the Future’.
During the 1990s, Joan added much creativity to the newly evolving MRA International Council. She was awarded the OBE by the NZ Government for services to education.
