2-4 pm on Zoom
Life Among the Qallunaat by Mini Aodla Freeman to be discussed.

Join the AMR mailing list to receive connection information: allmyrelations@ottawa.anglican.ca.

 Feb. 11-12
Marriage Preparation Workshop

The Marriage Preparation Course is designed to help participants to learn and grow through online presentations given by professional speakers, online small group discussions with trained facilitators, and couple conversations.

All couples are welcome, and participation is not limited by gender, age, or previous marital status.

Information and registration formss: www.ottawa.anglican.ca/marriage-preparation

Next workshop will be May 6-7.

Feb. 17
Diocesan celebration of Black History Month
2 pm 

Service at Christ Church Cathedral will be livestreamed on Anglican Diocese of Ottawa Facebook page and YouTube channel.

Feb. 21
125th Anniversary Lecture
7:30 pm on Zoom

Panel discussion: Signs of hope in the fight against climate change
For more details and registration link, please go to the diocesan website.

Feb. 26
Walk for Cornerstone Housing for Women

Cornerstone Housing for Women will be joining the Coldest Night of the Year walk for the third year in a row. You can join us on Feb. 26th for a fun, family friendly walk-a-thon to help us raise money for women experiencing homelessness in Ottawa. Please visit https://cnoy.org/location/ottawawestboro to register your team today!

Please note that Cornerstone is monitoring the pandemic situation closely and will be going virtual for the second year in a row with lots of opportunities to stay connected and engaged. We have some exciting things planned for this year so please stay tuned!

Mar. 27
Journeying as Allies Meeting

2-4 pm on Zoom
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good to be discussed.

Join the AMR mailing list to receive connection information: allmyrelations@ottawa.anglican.ca.

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Saint Mark’s did not start out to look like a chameleon. The first Saint Mark’s Church was built at a different location in Pakenham circa 1839. For lack of a picture, it seems to have been a basic auditory box, very much in vogue in those days. The second house of worship, seen here, began construction at this prominent site two generations later, with the cornerstone of the church proper laid on 2 August 1876.  

Many brick churches were built by all denominations in the 1870s and 1880s, but Saint Mark’s, if featuring minimal buttresses, was distinguished on all sides by horizontal string courses of white brick. The purpose of stringcourses usually is to help visually tie a building together. The stringcourse on the Centre Block of Parliament literally resembles a rope.  Clearly, the builders in the 1870s had no idea what was in store for this church a generation later. The 1876 house of worship was consecrated by Bishop John Travers Lewis on 5 January 1883.

If building a handsome house of worship stretched parish finances in the 1870s, by the turn of the century Pakenham Anglicans prepared to complete the parish fabric, despite the expense necessitated by doing so on their hill site.  In 1901 they added a tower, spire and transept, combining them with the 1876 church in the popular Queen Anne Revival style.

It might be tempting to declare that complexity, thy name is Saint Mark’s, Pakenham! Where do we not see complexity in this view?  To begin at the base, the basement wall is not a simple rubble surface, but rather rock-faced cut stone, with the entrance for the sexton tending the basement furnace sheltered by a portico.  Going to church here either meant climbing the hill to get to the main entrance or climbing steps within Saint Mark’s. The basement wall extended as a base for a shingled portal sheltered by a rounded arch in contrast to the pointed and square windows in the rest of the church and the huge perpendicular arch above it in the belfry.

The tower embodied complexity all by itself, its shingled bulk rising above the entrance porch in the foreground to a broach spire featuring dormers, with the spire interrupted by a band of wooden quatrefoils before culminating itself in a jaunty wooden finial.  The main entrances to the church all featured a grouping of three quatrefoil windows in the transom. The white brick stringcourses in the 1876 church were continued on the main floor in the 1901 construction. The large new gables featured textured wooden panels and triplicate windows, while the transition from lower brick wall to gable was accented by large ornamental brackets or crockets.  

The Archives collects parish registers, vestry reports, service registers, minutes of groups & committees, financial documents, property records (including cemeteries), insurance records, letters, pew bulletins, photographs, scrapbooks, parish newsletters and unusual documents. 

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.  

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Founded in 1957, AFC remains best known for supporting church infrastructure projects. As Brubacher remarks, “That’s completely understandable because for many churches, the call to imagine more has included funding for ramps, lifts, roofs, washrooms, and so much of the essential infrastructure that allows churches to welcome parishioners and reach out to community members.” In the past decade, of the more than $6 million in grants and loans awarded, nationally, forty per cent went to support infrastructure projects.

In recent years, AFC has also become a major partner in innovative ministry and spiritual formation projects, funding visionary programming that reflect an increasingly missional church. The remaining sixty per cent of AFC’s funding during the past decade supported other key impact zones: leadership and education, community ministries, Indigenous ministries, and sacred music and liturgical arts. These days, it’s fair to say that AFC’s funding extends well beyond bricks and mortar to foster a healthy, vibrant church.

Brubacher acknowledges that the first year of the pandemic presented funding challenges owing to the combination of fewer grant applications and the initial impact on AFC’s investment portfolio. “2021, however, was a totally different story. Thanks to the incredible generosity of our donor family—and the energy and creativity of our grant applicants—AFC had its most impactful year ever and gave more than $1 million in grants. Let’s aim that high again in 2022!” 

Brubacher is inspired by all the churches who are doing great work in uncertain times. “There are a lot of people finding courageous and creative ways to do good ministry, and for those who want to branch out, AFC is both a dependable and a hopeful partner. We believe in the vital importance of the Anglican church in our Canadian context, and we’re here to invest in that!” 

The deadline to apply for AFC’s spring grant cycle is April 1, 2022. Visit www.anglicanfoundation.org/apply for more information or email foundation@anglicanfoundation.org. 

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The Parish’s PWRDF representative, Gayda Errett, was unable to attend services because of mobility issues and asked Debbie Cox, the People’s Warden for St. John’s/St. Paul’s churches for assistance. Debbie provided excellent information to each congregation about our Parish engaging in a ‘PWRDF Sunday’ fundraiser throughout the month of November for the “World of Gifts..” Her efforts were highly successful and well appreciated by the congregants and Gayda in absentia.

The parish is small, but amazingly $665 was raised! This amount allowed parishioners to enthusiastically chose “A Whole Farm” as their primary gift. What added to their overall enthusiasm and ongoing excitement of such a successful fundraiser was that there were sufficient remaining funds to choose three more ‘gifts’: ‘Tools for Greening Spaces in Cuba’, ‘Water Tank in Kenya’ and two ‘New Mom Starter Kits in Lesotho.’ 

The whole event was one of joy and gratitude in our parish. 

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Then came COVID and all this was no longer possible. 

During this second year of restricted access to facilities, Attagutsiak with Deborah Tagornak and warden Bernie Delmaire decided instead to share gift cards with Inuit community members unable to return to their respective home communities for Christmas celebrations.

Donations were received from Inuit pan-Arctic organizations and local agencies including Inuvialuit Regional Corporation,Tungasuvvingat Inuit, Kitikmeot Inuit Association, Inuit Tapariit Kanatami, Kivallik Inuit Association and PWRDF. When their help was added to the contribution from St. Margaret’s operating budget, there was more than $6,000 available for Christmas cheer.

The next step was to send messages via social media, asking anyone wishing to receive food gift certificates to register giving their address, phone number and the number of people in their household. 

The committee decided to offer cards worth $25 for singles, $50 for couples, $75 for a family of three and $100 for a family of four or more. They ended  up purchasing 75 $25 cards at Freshco, 50 $50 cards at Walmart and 25 $75 cards at Giant Tiger. The only other expense was  the cost of printing a new Christmas postcard (pictured above). The cards were packaged and ready for handout at St. Margaret’s door on Dec. 23. Some ended up being delivered personally. 

In the end, 287 people (most in household groups) were registered for the gifts. A few cards were also handed out to unregistered folk on the spot. 

On Dec. 24, the committee had a few moments to catch their breath (we hope) before St. Margaret’s Christmas Eve service. 

The post St. Margaret’s finds a way around the Omicron damper appeared first on Perspective.

The idea of the gift bags started when I, as a member of the board of Cornerstone Housing for Women and a parishioner of St Aidan’s, became aware that Cornerstone would be providing gift bags to all of its residents and  suggested that St Aidan’s could do the same for the 60 women that would be at Dempsey, which is less than half a kilometer from the church. The Rev. Rosemary Parker and Debbie Trickey, a warden at St Aidan’s, fully supported the idea. To make sure we were able to have a gift bag for each woman, St Aidan’s asked St Thomas if they would like to help.  They were more than happy to participate under the leadership of Michele Bedard.  

The call went out for donations the first Sunday in Advent and much to everyone’s delight the response was very positive, not only from parishioners of St Aidan’s and St Thomas, but also members of the community who learned about the initiative via Facebook. By Dec. 22, we had more than 100 gift bags assembled and delivered to Dempsey. 

The women at Dempsey moved to that shelter in late November and are still adapting to their new environment, with the support of Cornerstone staff. We hope the gifts assured them in some small way that people were holding them in their heart this Christmas.  

The post St. Aidan’s and St. Thomas give gifts wrapped with care appeared first on Perspective.

Our guest speaker will be Joy Mighty, a professor emerita from Carleton University where she held appointments as associate vice-president, senior scholar for innovation in teaching and learning, and full professor in the Sprott School of Business and the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Her special interests are organizational development and change, as well as equity, diversity. We are fortunate to have her as our guest speaker since she is a much sought-after keynote speaker. 

Dr. Mighty is ideally suited to speak on our 2022 theme, “Embracing and Acknowledging Diversity.” This theme is in support of the launch of “Project Anti-Racism: Advancing Inclusion and Reconciliation in the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa” 

For Christians, the practice of multicultural diversity is motivated by love for God and love of human beings. As peoples from various races, cultures and conditions come to faith in Jesus Christ, He reconciles them to God the Father and therefore to each other. The Church has an inherent and God-given diversity. Knowing this, how can the Church heal the sin of racism and instead help people see each other as sisters and brothers—children of our Heavenly Father? 

The late Emeritus Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu expressed his belief that, “Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are precisely different in order to realise our need of one another.” Celebrating Black History Month gives us the opportunity to pause and give thanks to God for our diversity and work together for a better world.

Each February gives us a chance to acknowledge the presence among us of people of African descent. I do hope that congregations will select one or more Sundays in order to listen and learn about Black History. I would be pleased to help you with resources or the names of possible guest speakers. We currently have six black clergy licensed to preach in our Diocese and a long list of black lay people with whom I can connect you for a Sunday sermon. Please e-mail me at georgekwari@gmail.com for more information.

On behalf of the Planning Committee, I look forward to seeing you all, at either in person at Christ Church Cathedral or online on Feb. 19.

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