There’s a lot for St. Matthias’ to be thankful for, 150 years on…
Read MoreIf you were reading a St. Matthias’ parish email in the spring or summer of 2022, you may have encountered a plaintive plea from your wardens on the subject of updating the inventory. “We want you,” you were to imagine Heather Barwick or Jessica Stilwell saying…
Read MoreMarch of this year, we considered a letter from a mysterious “John,” who detailed several physical remnants of the original church persisting to the new 1912 building. One of John’s pieces was the Memorial Chapel altar. John’s letter says that “the altar in the North Transept came from the old church and was stored down in the furnace room of the present building until Canon Oliver found it there after the transept was built and put it back in use.” But was he right?
Read MoreAs Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Queen Victoria was the highest authority to which the new congregation of St. Matthias’ owed allegiance. In fact, if St. Matthias’ had been founded about twenty years earlier, it would have had an even more direct line to the monarchy, since the Church of England in the Dominion of Canada was only granted autonomy as an ecclesiastical province in the 1850s. Next week, when Charles III is coronated, he will take up the mantle of Defender and Governor of Anglicanism…
Read MoreThe morning of April 28th, 1912 dawned cold and clear after an unseasonably warm but cloudy Saturday. Matthians on their way to church would have donned their hats and gloves, made sure their prayerbooks were in hand, and then set foot for the first time into a service held in the building they’d been dreaming about for over twenty years. Their service of morning prayer would have been rather different than ours…
Read MoreToday’s St. Matthias’ choristers get their weekly assignments via email (and whiteboard), but they otherwise aren’t all that different from the assignments of the 1930s and 1940s…
Read MoreReading lessons and welcoming people into the church are two tasks that have been with St. Matthias’ as long as we’ve been a “we”! Each piece of scripture read and each bulletin handed out or collection plate circulated is the result of slowly evolving traditions…
Read MoreThings at St. Matthias’ haven’t always been as serious as vestry meetings, financial reports, and lost bells. The parish has a long and vibrant history in the arts – our choir, of course, and the succession of organs, but also operettas, fashion shows, and Christmas pageants…
Read MoreTwice a week, every week, volunteers gather in the St. Matthias’ kitchen to cook, package, and deliver meals. They’ve been doing it since 1965, when the St. Matthias’ Association of Women collaborated with the Victorian Order of Nurses and the Montreal Volunteer Bureau on a pilot project…
Read MoreBy 1967, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated between the Feast of the Confession of St. Peter (January 18th) and the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25th), had been in the Anglican mind for 100 years…
Read MoreThe sketch shows a rather well-travelled piece of St. Matthias’ history: the bell of the original building, forged in 1858 by Jones & Coy in Troy, New York. The plaque on the bell reads…
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