Saint Mary’s Church, Westmeath — Deanery of the Northwest

Anglicans faced numerous challenges in getting established in eastern Ontario and western Quebec during the nineteenth century. This has not been the traditional account presented in general histories of Ontario and Quebec. Anglican historiographers know better. In the day, other denominations decried the supposed advantages enjoyed by the Church of England over all other denominations.

A Presbyterian minister at Perth, the Rev. William Bell, in his 1824 book Hints to Emigrants stated: “The church of England claims an establishment here and meets with a decided preference from the members of government.” While this was certainly the aim of Archdeacon John Strachan at York (Toronto), and although Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Colborne endowed a number of rectories in the 1830s (local examples being at Franktown and Carleton Place), by and large the number of Anglican clergy and churches fell behind various other denominations during the first half of the nineteenth century.

So, although the Westmeath area was visited as early as the 1820s by Governor General Dalhousie (who favoured the Church of Scotland) and his retinue, it was not until the end of the century that Anglicans managed to build a house of worship on this remote frontier across the Ottawa River from the Province of Quebec. As early as 1855, Henry Bromley of Westmeath was enlisted as a pillar of the church by the Rev. E.H.M. Baker in the larger Pembroke vicinity.

Westmeath is first mentioned as an outstation of the Mission of Beachburg in 1869, but the going proved tough on the Calumet Island frontier in that generation, and it was removed from the list of stations in that mission from 1877 to 1879. In 1881, the Mission of Beachburg was dissolved, and Westmeath seems not to have received any services from an Anglican clergyman until 1884 when the Mission of Beachburg was recreated. Hope for a new beginning was planted in 1897 when Thomas Monsel donated the site for an Anglican house of worship.

A church of faultless lines was built of local grey limestone at Westmeath in 1898, doubtless partly subsidized by the still-new Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, and Saint Mary’s Church was duly consecrated by Bishop Charles Hamilton on 8 January 1899. Had the church been built half a century earlier, it seems likely that its name would have been selected from eight or so favoured Anglican choices: Christ Church, Saint James, Saint John’s, Saint Paul’s, Saint George’s, Saint Thomas’s, Trinity and Holy Trinity.

If the choice of the name of Saint Mary’s was chosen by the bishop over the objections of the church, at the time it was said to be a scandal that one week after the new house of worship was consecrated, it was practically deserted because parishioners refused to attend services. That did not last, but the years of struggle were by no means over. Half a century later, from 1944 to 1946 the Mission of Beachburg was an outstation of the Parish of Cobden. By 1968, Westmeath was an outstation of the Parish of Beachburg-Cobden. Saint Mary’s Church, Westmeath celebrated a century of worship on 13 December 1998. In the 2010s, Bishop John H. Chapman secularized this house of worship.

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