Saint Alban, Mattawa — Pembroke Deanery

Mattawa had always been regarded as an important place, serving as a jumping off place from the settled area of Upper Canada on the upper Ottawa River to the trapping territory of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Governor General Dalhousie had visited with artists in tow as early as the 1820s. Late Victorian Anglicans regarded Mattawa as the centre of a significant mission territory.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find this remarkable photograph of Saint Alban-the-Martyr Church, Mattawa taken only four years after the church was built in 1883. In 1882, the Mission of Clara was established, to provide services for the Mattawa and Chalk River district.  Land was conveyed to the Rev. Charles Vaughan Forster Bliss on 6 November 1882, and Saint Alban’s Church was built at Mattawa, probably the following year. The man we see here in the bowler hat was probably Forster Bliss. By 1884, the Clara Mission consisted of Mattawa, Chalk River, Sturgeon Falls, Bissett’s Creek and North Bay.

Saint Alban’s was not a large church, but its name and High Victorian Gothic Revival design speaks to the missionary drive of those who built it. It was as if Saint Alban’s, Ottawa had been transferred to the frontier and built on a smaller scale and in brick. Its belfry containing a sacral bell was stationed above the chancel arch inside, and the steep belfry roof was crowned by a Celtic cross.

Unlike the earliest churches that simply had been auditory boxes, the different rooflines marked the separate functions of the porch, the sacristy, the nave, the chancel. A cross was marked in brick in the upper west wall, while the lancet arches in the doors and windows proclaimed to the world passing by that this was a Christian house of worship. If Mattawa could not afford the iron cresting of Saint Alban’s in Ottawa, it lined the ridgepole with crockets fashioned from wood. In the distance on the far right we see the roof of a driveshed for parishioners driving into the village from a distance.

There are various extraordinary features shown here. Not least of these is the landscape strewn with boulders, as if to illustrate that early farmers in Renfrew County faced a harvest of stones. So early is this picture that no attempt has been made at landscaping; instead a wooden walkway was placed over the boulders to prevent anyone stumbling as they made their way to the church. The large clergy house on the left was home to various clergy who served a large territory. An enclosed walkway was built between the clergy house and the church sacristy. A frame shed in front of this walkway most likely contained privies; they too had pointed windows.

Two years before this photograph was taken, the Church of England mission included: Mattawa; Saint Michael’s, North Bay; Saint Mary’s, Sturgeon Falls, Chalk River; Lake Tallon [sic]; Deux Rivières; La Vase among other places. In 1886, this territory was renamed the Upper Ottawa Mission, and it included outstations at Renton and Les Erable [sic].  In 1887, the mission included Saint Alban’s, Mattawa; Chalk River; Saint Augustine’s, Deux Rivières; Saint Margaret’s, Lake Tallon (Rutherglen); Fields’ schoolhouse and Schoolhouse No. 3; Eau Claire; Petawawa; Klock’s and Les Erable [sic].

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