Parishioners say farewell to Innisville church

Parishioners are saying farewell to St. John’s Anglican Church, Innisville, which was officially disestablished on Dec. 12.

It has been a long goodbye. The parish voted to disestablish at a special vestry meeting more than a year ago on Jan. 22, 2023, and Anglican services have not been held there for months.

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“It was a wonderful church. We really enjoyed it,” said warden and long-time parishioner Myrna Peters. “We just didn’t have the numbers,” she said, explaining that the congregation was aging and everyone who was able took on responsibilities at the church. “I was the cleaner,” she said.

Warden Tom Gardiner, who was baptized in the church and has been a parishioner for 85 years, remembers when the church was a very different, bustling place. “In the Sunday School room, there are pictures of the 50th and the 75th [anniversaries], he said. “I don’t know, we got all the people in the church for the 50th… . The crowd was huge,” he said. “Now when you get to the 75th, it was probably down by 40 percent.” By the time, the church reached its 100th anniversary, “we didn’t even take a picture,” he said. “We had a special service alright, and it was well attended. We had an anniversary dinner and dance for the 100th.  The billing that we did was kind of novel. We had a midnight service on New Year’s eve in 2011. But we didn’t have the numbers that they had at the other two.”

Even as late as the 1990s, “We’d have probably 50 to 60 parishioners on a Sunday,” Gardiner said. The pandemic was the final blow, but “our numbers had gone down by attrition because it was an older population, and every year, there were a few more who weren’t able to go or had passed away,” he said. “

And with fewer people going to church in general, attendance fell off. “The last number of years before COVID, I tried to have a few concerts and musical events every year as fundraising, and they were fairly successful, enough to keep the doors open anyway,” said Gardiner, “but during COVID you couldn’t have anything like that either.”

The church is still being used by St. Porphyrios Orthodox Church, a Carpathian congregation that has been renting and sharing space with the Anglican congregation for some time.

The building is for sale, but Gardiner explained that it is not easy for new owners to repurpose the building for residential or commercial use because the cemetery is attached and cannot be severed. Both he and Ron Dickinson, secretary treasurer of the cemetery board, say they hope another denomination or faith group will purchase the property.

“I’d hate to see it used for anything else than a place of worship,” said Gardiner, who is a fourth-generation parishioner. His great-grandfather attended the church before the original wood-framed building that was replaced by the current stone building. There is some question about when the original church was built. The earliest date on a tombstone in the cemetery is 1842.

The current stone building was finished in 1912.

Dickinson is a third-generation parishioner, who was baptized and married in the church.  His family members are buried in the cemetery, so his work on the cemetery board and caring for the cemetery itself for 40 years is personal.

Dickinson said he has received telephone calls from people whose family members are buried in the cemetery or who want to be buried there in the future. They are concerned about what will happen to the cemetery, but Dickinson has reassured them that there are strict government regulations about the care and maintenance of cemeteries. Still, he said, he would prefer to see another denomination buy the property to keep that a more personal connection to the cemetery.

Parishioners looking for a new church home have quite a few choices in the vicinity.

“We’re part of the Parish of Mississippi Lake, so there’s St. James, Franktown and St. James, Carleton Place, and Christ Church Ashton, still within the parish,” said Gardiner, who has also attended the nearby Boyd’s United Church. “What’s happening in a lot of these small rural churches is the same as the decision we faced,” said Gardiner. “Because they were built in the days of the horse and buggy, they had to be within close proximity, but “distance now isn’t that much of a problem. Once you get in the car, another five minutes’ drive, from my point of view, doesn’t really make much difference. It’s wherever you feel comfortable and that’s convenient.”