Daughter of Joseph Clavet and Hélène Cyr from Saint-Basile, Dorina studied at Hôtel-Dieu Academy and at the Normal School in Fredericton. She entered the community of the Religious Hospitallers in Saint-Basile, but she left and went to Notre-Dame Hospital in Montreal. She graduated as a nurse in 1948. She was part of the teaching staff of the School of Nursing in Edmundston when she undertook a trip to Rome in 1950, to celebrate the Holy Year. Dorina was aboard the Canadian plane that went down on Mount Obiou in the French Alps on the trip back home.