A Conundrum
Over the course of its 150-year history, Saint James’s Church at Manotick faced the problems of growth, in particular the conundrum of responding to the pressures of owning a heritage building.
Saint James’s Church originally was built in 1876 on land donated by Moss Kent Dickinson, owner of the large stone village gristmill at Long Island, who was mayor of Ottawa for a time.
Saint James’s was built in a developing village and became one of the signature architectural features of the village. Its builders could not have anticipated the pressures of a growing congregation. Fortunately, there was nothing in its development to match the grisly event that happened at Dickinson’s Mill a mere 100 yards upstream 15 years earlier.
In early March of 1861, Joseph Merrill Currier and Moss Kent Dickinson organized a day of festivities to celebrate the first anniversary of their stone gristmill. Part of the day’s activities included a tour of inspection of the mill itself attended by Currier and his wife Anna. A smiling Anna, elegantly dressed and coiffed in the fashion of the day proudly took her husband’s arm and strolled through the building. All the machines were turned on to show friends and officials alike the power of the water turbines. No one could speak above the noise, and all marveled at the mill’s technology and delighted in its obvious success.
Then suddenly, as if out of a nightmare, Anna lost her balance. She fought to keep a hold on her husband’s arm, but her billowing crinoline was caught in one of the machines. Her friends and guests, standing only a few feet away, were powerless to help. Her screams were barely audible above the noise, and as her husband and guests watched in shocked horror, Anna was sucked into the machine, hurled against its post, and killed before the machine could be stopped.
Fifteen years later, Saint James’ Church was an essay in carpenter Gothic, with porch and vestry wings. Notably, it had no tower. From 1877, the congregation at Manotick was part of the Parish of North Gower with nearby congregations worshipping in churches located at Kars, North Gower and the 1st Concession of Osgoode Township.
Saint James’s Church grew. And steadily. So much so, that by 1887, it headed the Parish of Manotick, with churches at the outlying stations of Kars and Osgoode. It was at that time that the house of worship was raised on a new foundation. Fifteen years after that, in 1902, we are told that the church was “greatly improved” by enlarging the nave and building a bell tower with battlements on the front. By this point, the house of worship no longer bore much resemblance to the house of worship first put up just a quarter of a century earlier.
It is curious how parishes become inured, even accepting of change. What once seemed startling comes to be treasured and even taken for granted as having always existed. Change often is forgotten. The fiftieth anniversary of Saint James’s Church was celebrated in 1926, with many parishioners somehow assuming that the building had always existed in its then current form from the beginning. They came to assume that the tower had always been in place. As growth continued, in 1946 the basement was made into a parish hall.
In the black and white photograph shown here, Saint James’s Church was barely able to contain an AYPA (Anglican Young People’s Association) conference that took place in the village circa 1950. Indeed, by 1958, such was the growth of this congregation that Manotick had become a one-point parish, with Saint George’s Church, Hawthorne briefly serving as an out-station in 1978-1979.
Which brings us to the conundrum faced by parishioners at Saint James’s Church in the 1980s. For by then, the house of worship no longer could hold the congregation. What were they to do?
Previously there had been four solutions to such a dilemma elsewhere across the Diocese of Ottawa. The first was to retain the old church and integrate it with a larger new worship space, as had been done at All Saints Church, Westboro and at Christ Church, Bells Corners.
A second option was to send their venerable house of worship to a heritage site such as Upper Canada Village, and build anew elsewhere, as Christ Church, Moulinette had done.
Yet a third option was to tear down the old church and put up a larger more modern building, as Saint John’s Church at Iroquois did. This was a controversial option, given the many ties to the old church, as in local minds it defined Manotick, much as did Watson’s Mill.
And fourth, the congregation could decide to abandon the old church and build at a new site, as had been the case when Saint John’s, Merivale was abandoned for Saint John the Divine, Nepean (long since burned down) in the 1960s.
None of these solutions precisely suited the good Anglicans of Manotick. To begin with, the congregation did not want to leave their site. There was the matter of strong local appreciation of built heritage that did not take kindly to tearing down a focal building from the past, especially as the author of the recently published The Architectural Heritage of the Rideau Corridor, Barbara Humphreys, was a member of the parish.
A compromise (which did not please heritage folk) was decided on. The decision was made to tear down the old church and design a larger building to look exactly like it, incorporating such architectural elements from the old such structure as the stained glass windows in the new.
Worship services were held in the Royal Canadian Legion hall for 10 months while the old church was taken down and the new one built. The colour photograph here shows a crane in place just before a wrecking ball levelled the old house of worship after various architectural components to be saved had been removed.
A new much larger church, capable of sustaining future growth, arose on the site of the old house of worship. Curiously, it looked very much like the church that had stood on the site for a century, incorporating many of the features that had accumulated over the decades, such as the stained-glass windows. Bishop Edwin Lackey conducted the dedication service in the new church on 10 March 1985, and 17 years later Saint James the Apostle Church was consecrated by Bishop John A. Baycroft on 24 October 1993.
And now, Saint James the Apostle Church at Manotick is celebrating its 150th anniversary as a centre of Anglican worship. Thanks to its much larger fabric, it is a dynamic parish of the Diocese of Ottawa.
If you would like to help the Archives preserve the records of the Diocese and its parishes, why not become a Friend of the Archives? Your $20 membership brings you three issues of the lively, informative Newsletter, and you will receive a tax receipt for further donations above that amount.
Diocesan Archives 51 M4 11
Saint James the Apostle, Manotick — West Ottawa Deanery
A Conundrum
Over the course of its 150-year history, Saint James’s Church at Manotick faced the problems of growth, in particular the conundrum of responding to the pressures of owning a heritage building.
Saint James’s Church originally was built in 1876 on land donated by Moss Kent Dickinson, owner of the large stone village gristmill at Long Island, who was mayor of Ottawa for a time.
Saint James’s was built in a developing village and became one of the signature architectural features of the village. Its builders could not have anticipated the pressures of a growing congregation. Fortunately, there was nothing in its development to match the grisly event that happened at Dickinson’s Mill a mere 100 yards upstream 15 years earlier.
In early March of 1861, Joseph Merrill Currier and Moss Kent Dickinson organized a day of festivities to celebrate the first anniversary of their stone gristmill. Part of the day’s activities included a tour of inspection of the mill itself attended by Currier and his wife Anna. A smiling Anna, elegantly dressed and coiffed in the fashion of the day proudly took her husband’s arm and strolled through the building. All the machines were turned on to show friends and officials alike the power of the water turbines. No one could speak above the noise, and all marveled at the mill’s technology and delighted in its obvious success.
Then suddenly, as if out of a nightmare, Anna lost her balance. She fought to keep a hold on her husband’s arm, but her billowing crinoline was caught in one of the machines. Her friends and guests, standing only a few feet away, were powerless to help. Her screams were barely audible above the noise, and as her husband and guests watched in shocked horror, Anna was sucked into the machine, hurled against its post, and killed before the machine could be stopped.
Fifteen years later, Saint James’ Church was an essay in carpenter Gothic, with porch and vestry wings. Notably, it had no tower. From 1877, the congregation at Manotick was part of the Parish of North Gower with nearby congregations worshipping in churches located at Kars, North Gower and the 1st Concession of Osgoode Township.
Saint James’s Church grew. And steadily. So much so, that by 1887, it headed the Parish of Manotick, with churches at the outlying stations of Kars and Osgoode. It was at that time that the house of worship was raised on a new foundation. Fifteen years after that, in 1902, we are told that the church was “greatly improved” by enlarging the nave and building a bell tower with battlements on the front. By this point, the house of worship no longer bore much resemblance to the house of worship first put up just a quarter of a century earlier.
It is curious how parishes become inured, even accepting of change. What once seemed startling comes to be treasured and even taken for granted as having always existed. Change often is forgotten. The fiftieth anniversary of Saint James’s Church was celebrated in 1926, with many parishioners somehow assuming that the building had always existed in its then current form from the beginning. They came to assume that the tower had always been in place. As growth continued, in 1946 the basement was made into a parish hall.
In the black and white photograph shown here, Saint James’s Church was barely able to contain an AYPA (Anglican Young People’s Association) conference that took place in the village circa 1950. Indeed, by 1958, such was the growth of this congregation that Manotick had become a one-point parish, with Saint George’s Church, Hawthorne briefly serving as an out-station in 1978-1979.
Which brings us to the conundrum faced by parishioners at Saint James’s Church in the 1980s. For by then, the house of worship no longer could hold the congregation. What were they to do?
Previously there had been four solutions to such a dilemma elsewhere across the Diocese of Ottawa. The first was to retain the old church and integrate it with a larger new worship space, as had been done at All Saints Church, Westboro and at Christ Church, Bells Corners.
A second option was to send their venerable house of worship to a heritage site such as Upper Canada Village, and build anew elsewhere, as Christ Church, Moulinette had done.
Yet a third option was to tear down the old church and put up a larger more modern building, as Saint John’s Church at Iroquois did. This was a controversial option, given the many ties to the old church, as in local minds it defined Manotick, much as did Watson’s Mill.
And fourth, the congregation could decide to abandon the old church and build at a new site, as had been the case when Saint John’s, Merivale was abandoned for Saint John the Divine, Nepean (long since burned down) in the 1960s.
None of these solutions precisely suited the good Anglicans of Manotick. To begin with, the congregation did not want to leave their site. There was the matter of strong local appreciation of built heritage that did not take kindly to tearing down a focal building from the past, especially as the author of the recently published The Architectural Heritage of the Rideau Corridor, Barbara Humphreys, was a member of the parish.
A compromise (which did not please heritage folk) was decided on. The decision was made to tear down the old church and design a larger building to look exactly like it, incorporating such architectural elements from the old such structure as the stained glass windows in the new.
Worship services were held in the Royal Canadian Legion hall for 10 months while the old church was taken down and the new one built. The colour photograph here shows a crane in place just before a wrecking ball levelled the old house of worship after various architectural components to be saved had been removed.
A new much larger church, capable of sustaining future growth, arose on the site of the old house of worship. Curiously, it looked very much like the church that had stood on the site for a century, incorporating many of the features that had accumulated over the decades, such as the stained-glass windows. Bishop Edwin Lackey conducted the dedication service in the new church on 10 March 1985, and 17 years later Saint James the Apostle Church was consecrated by Bishop John A. Baycroft on 24 October 1993.
And now, Saint James the Apostle Church at Manotick is celebrating its 150th anniversary as a centre of Anglican worship. Thanks to its much larger fabric, it is a dynamic parish of the Diocese of Ottawa.
If you would like to help the Archives preserve the records of the Diocese and its parishes, why not become a Friend of the Archives? Your $20 membership brings you three issues of the lively, informative Newsletter, and you will receive a tax receipt for further donations above that amount.
Diocesan Archives 51 M4 11
Dr. Glenn J Lockwood is the Diocesan Archivist.
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