Saint Paul, Dunrobin — Ottawa West Deanery

This photograph was brought into the Archives in 2024. There was no identification, except on the back where the query was faintly penciled, “St. Paul’s, Dunrobin?” Note the question mark. Below the image one can make out the words on the matte referring to the eminent Ottawa Studio of photographer, “Sam[uel] J. Jarvis.” The design of the matte lettering suggests that this photograph was made at some point between the 1890s and the early 1900s. So much for evidence.

Depend on it, gentle reader. This is NOT Saint Paul’s Church, Dunrobin. This is apparent for a number of reasons. First, it is much too large a building. Second, there is a tower showing in this image where there never was a tower on the house of worship at Dunrobin. Third, there never were eyebrow windows on the roof of Saint Paul’s Church. Fourth, we remind ourselves that Saint Paul’s Church at Dunrobin was built in 1896. Even at that late date, it accorded with the precepts promoted by the Tractarians. It must have seemed the latest word in the Tractarian canon. At least it must have so seemed in the Ottawa valley. In that respect, it was in decided contrast with the two other rather old-fashioned churches in the then Parish of March—Old Saint Mary’s Church at Pinhey’s Point on the Ottawa River (built 1827) and Saint John’s, South March (built 1842).

The two older churches in the Parish of March were rectangular auditory boxes, one of them fronted by a central tower on the front façade, while the other simply had a centrally located front entrance porch and boasted no tower.

Saint Paul’s, by contrast, was built according to a rubric whereby the external features were emblematic of the internal functions. A bell-cote for a sacral bell was located midway along the roof ridge, just like at Saint Albans in the Sandy Hill area of Ottawa, as an external indicator of the boundary between the congregation and the chancel indoors. There is no evidence of that bell-cote in this photograph. The notation on the back of the photograph notwithstanding, we repeat, this is NOT Saint Paul’s Church at Dunrobin.

But, then, where is it? There is a certain whimsy to the gable above the main entrance and the chancel gable, suggesting timber and plaster work of an earlier time as reimagined by some backward-looking Edwardian architect.

There is whimsy as well in the rather fine details of the belfry at the top of the tower—apparently designed so that the sound of the bell calling parishioners to worship will sound as far and wide as possible over the surrounding countryside.

Wait a minute! There is something eerily familiar about the tower, with the four pylons of stone at the corners supporting the belfry—the unmistakable hallmark of J.W.H. Watts who designed and built churches churches at Port Elmsley (1900), Renfrew (1900), Galetta (1902), Holy Trinity, Riverside (1902), Saint Mary’s, North March (1908), Saint John’s, Innisville (1911), Saint Thomas’s, Woodlawn (started 1913) and Christ Church, Ashton (1915).

Come to think of it, is what we see here not the same design of belfry that we see on New Saint Mary’s Church, North March? And are those not the same timbered gables we see on new Saint Mary’s Church, North March?  Why do they look so similar?

And yet, it is demonstrably clear that this is NOT Saint Mary’s Church, North March any more than it is Saint Paul’s, Dunrobin. Something here is tied up in the internal politics of the Parish of March.

It is only when we look more closely that we realized that not only is this NOT the church at Dunrobin, NOR is it Saint Mary’s, North March. Small wonder that someone in the past trying to identify this obviously Anglican house of worship from the Ottawa valley somehow perceived it to be designed by J.W.H. Watts, but had difficulty in placing this building.  After all, we today have our own difficulty placing the church.

A crazy idea strikes us. Is it possible that it doesn’t exist anywhere? Indeed, is it possible that it isn’t even a photograph?  Or, to put it another way, perhaps we should say that it is a photograph but not an actual building.

Instead, it is a cleverly taken photograph of an artist or architect’s (probably Watts) sketch for a large new church that was proposed to combine the congregations of Old Saint Mary’s and the more recently built Saint Paul’s, Dunrobin in an enlarged building either at Dunrobin or halfway between Pinhey’s Point and Dunrobin?

So cleverly has the sketch been done, and the photographer has complied to keep the image small, so as to convince the viewer that he or she is beholding an actual building that exists, not simply a sketch of a proposed building. Artists refer to this as ‘trompe l’oeil’ which is a French expression that means “deceive the eye.” A well-known example of ‘trompe l’oeil’ in Ottawa can be found in the fantastic marble pillars in Notre Dame Basilica which, in fact, are pine pillars cleverly painted to give the impression of rare, imported marble.

At a time when Anglican clergy still remained in short supply in the larger Ottawa region, this sketch was part of an attempt to reduce the number of places where the parish priest would be obliged to hold service on Sunday morning. This seemingly logical solution came up smack against the pride of the Pinhey family descendants whose ancestor had built and paid for the building of the original Old Saint Mary’s on the Pinhey property—right down to the remarkable masonry of the ogee-arched windows.

The Pinheys refused to let the name of the church they had built and funded lapse by being merged in some new larger building at Dunrobin—the building proposed here. They were willing to compromise only in allowing the New Saint Mary’s to be built in a more central place in the concessions of northern March Township.

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