Christ Church, Bells Corners, by no stretch of the imagination, is one of the earliest Anglican churches or parishes in the region. Indeed, worship services started out for local Anglicans as part of a stone Union Church shared with local Methodists and Presbyterians on land provided by a local Anglican tavernkeeper, Hugh Bell in the 1860s. No sooner had local Anglicans exerted themselves to build the frame Christ Church in 1870 than it unobligingly burned down in the huge conflagration blowing across rural Carleton County. And so, a quarter of a century before the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa was carved out of the eastern and northern sections of the Diocese of Ontario in 1896, Anglicans at Bells Corners found themselves at work building their third house of worship—this time in non-flammable brick.

Here we see that third house of worship at Bells Corners as photographed a century later as incorporated into a parish complex that shows the peak of the fourth Christ Church rising above the finishing touches being placed on the landscaping circa 1970.

The brick construction of the third Christ Church may have been a reflexive response to the Carleton County fire, in hopes that should another fire happen along, the brick walls of the new house of worship might prove more resistant to the devouring element than the frame house of worship had been.

It is possible that the design of the third church, although built in brick, was based almost exactly on that of the church that burned. The construction material may be different, but the corbel windows and the unambitious scale both suggest that its design was intended for a frame house of worship.

There are two curious aspects to the 1871 church. The first is the mansard roof on the belfry, a choice suggesting that the designs (the same design?) of the 1870 and 1871 church were both influenced by Thomas Fuller who mixed English Gothic Revival and French Second Empire in the Centre Block of parliament to express the bicultural make-up of Canada. The second, curious aspect is the unusual stick style design of the bargeboard of the upper gable, deliberately designed to echo the corbel arches of the windows, yet incorporating a Saint Andrew’s cross and two smaller crosses.

A century later, the 1871 church was incorporated into a larger new complex designed to show how modern the church could appear, yet still be conscious of its heritage. What did not show, at least not at first, was that most of the new complex was below grade.

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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I next encountered Herb when I became involved with the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer (AFP) in 1990s, and through his association with Bishop Barry Curtis, another priest who moved west to Calgary from Ottawa and who was the National Director of AFP for a time before retiring and coming back to Ottawa. From that time right up to the present time, Herb and I became “pen pals,” firstly by written letters and then by email. Over the years, Herb wrote many articles on prayer for the AFP Newsletter and others. He also produced several audio CDs, one of which, Prayer Among Friends: an Audio Journey into the World of Prayer, has been converted and is available on the AFP website at https://anglicanprayer.org/index.php/hov/.

Herb’s life was marked by unwavering dedication to his faith, tireless service to his community and a boundless spirit that touched the lives of all who knew him. His ministry was not confined to the walls of a church; it extended to the streets, homes, and hearts of everyone he encountered. With a gentle voice and a warm smile, he brought comfort to the weary, hope to the downtrodden, and joy to the sorrowful. Whether he was delivering a powerful sermon, visiting the sick, or lending a listening ear, his presence was a testament to God’s love in action. He taught us the true meaning of grace, humility, and selflessness, always putting others before himself. He was an inspiration to all who knew him,

His spirit lives on in the countless lives he touched, the lessons he imparted, and the love he shared so freely. We give thanks for the gift of his presence among us. His earthly journey may have come to an end, but his light will continue to shine brightly in our memories and in our hearts. May we honor his legacy by living with the same compassion, faith, and dedication that he exemplified every day of his life. Rest in peace, Reverend Thomas Herbert O’Driscoll. Your spirit will forever be with us, guiding us, comforting us, and reminding us of the power of prayer and a life lived in service to others.

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Restrictions on aid delivery and movement of people in Gaza have caused shortages of essential supplies, including food and medical care. Poor sanitary conditions have led to disease outbreaks, which have been increasing the need for medical services and straining medical staff. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, an estimated 40,000 Palestinians have died and 1.9 million have been displaced.

With this ongoing violence, displacement, supply shortages, and loss of livelihoods affecting communities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Diocese of Jerusalem (which encompasses all of Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon) identified five of its pre-existing ministries that were well positioned to make a difference. In addition to supporting health services at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, this project also enabled people in the West Bank to access healthcare at St. Luke’s Hospital in Nablus and Penman Clinic in Jenin, along with maintaining access to school for children at the National Kindergarten in Nablus and St. George’s School in East Jerusalem.

The project supported 1,502 at-risk families and successfully reduced mortality rates through early detection and intervention and provided quality education for 125 children.

Support of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza has made it possible for medical staff to provide critical care to those in need. The Diocese of Jerusalem shares the story of Ahmed, 35, one of the many patients who was injured during an Israel Defence Force military operation in Gaza. Ahmed underwent urgent surgery at Al-Ahli Hospital, where the medical team made every effort to save his leg. Thanks to their expertise and dedication, the operation was a success, and Ahmed received the necessary physical therapy to recover. The hospital provided all treatment and care, free of charge.

Yaser, a father of five, struggled to provide for his family after losing his job due to the war. When his youngest son, Saed, fell ill with a severe respiratory condition, the family turned to St. Luke’s Hospital. The hospital provided Saed with necessary treatment, including medication and respiratory therapy, at no cost. Saed recovered, and Yaser, grateful for the hospital’s care, offered his time and skills to help with repairs and maintenance of the hospital building.

The National Kindergarten in Nablus provides early childhood education and care to local families. Despite the challenges posed by the war, the kindergarten has continued to operate, offering a safe environment for young children. Recently, the kindergarten welcomed Mustafa and Malak, four-year-old twins who needed a supportive and stimulating environment. With the help of the kindergarten, the twins have begun to thrive, and their family has expressed gratitude for the support and care they have received during this time.

Besides supporting the Diocese of Jerusalem, PWRDF has allocated $100,000 from its equity in the Canadian Foodgrains Bank to a food assistance project in Gaza, led by the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). This project is a result of the Humanitarian Coalition’s fundraising campaign in the fall of 2023 and has already begun distributing essential food packages to those in need.

How you can help
Please continue to pray for the people affected by this conflict. You can also donate to PWRDF’s Gaza and West Bank Emergency Appeal found on our Give Today page. You can also donate by phone at 416-822-9083 (or leave a message toll-free at 1-866-308-7973 and PWRDF staff will return your call) or by mail. Send your cheque to PWRDF, 80 Hayden Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto, ON, Canada, M4Y 3G2. Please indicate “Gaza and West Bank” in the memo field.

 Photo and article courtesy of PWRDF.

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You will enjoy great shopping knowing that you are helping many important causes.

The event not only supports the work of the church, but also the food bank at the Rideau Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre, Cornerstone Housing for Women and Belong Ottawa at Centre 454 and at The Well/La Source (day programs which provide food, social supports as well as showers and laundry facilities).

In the past, our bazaar has always been a success, and it is mainly due to YOU!   We are only as good as the donations we receive!  So, we respectfully ask that should you be downsizing or wanting to dispose of items in your home, please consider donating to our bazaar.  We always need unique souvenirs, classic tea sets, glass, costume jewellery, books, attic treasures, toys, games and any special hand-made items.  Closer to the date we would also appreciate home baking and preserves!

If you have any questions at all, please call either Liz 613-745-4677 or Linda 613-298-9980.  We would be happy to pick up boxes from you and thank you in advance for considering St Bart’s.

Looking forward to seeing you on Nov. 2 at 125 MacKay Street, 12 p.m. to  4 p.m.

— Linda Assad-Butcher and Liz Heatherington are co-conveners of the annual bazaar at the Church of St Bartholomew, Ottawa.

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At the present time, there are only a few dioceses with active secretariats who meet regularly and have an annual Cursillo weekend. The dioceses of Calgary, Edmonton, Huron, Islands and Inlets (formerly the Diocese of British Columbia), Niagara, The Northern Lights (formerly Rupert’s Land) and Ottawa were represented at this year’s meeting. Sadly, the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island had just voted to close Cursillo before the triennial meeting.

The weekend was structured in an Ultreya model with opportunities for worship and continuous music in the chapel. There was a choice of two workshops—one on Pastoral Listening and the other on reimagining the future of Cursillo. Lots of active conversation ensued.

We also had a wonderful presentation from retired Bishop Logan McMenamie, formerly the Bishop of the Diocese of Islands and Inlets, who shared reflections on his lenten walk from Alert Bay to Victoria in the spring of 2016. As he journeyed, he sought permission to enter each Indigenous community as an act of contrition and repentance for the Anglican church’s role in colonizing the land and the Indian residential school system. An insightful discussion followed with many more stories shared.

We were also privileged to have the Primate, Archbishop Linda Nicholls, share in our fellowship. She joined us on the Saturday to give the keynote address, celebrate at our worship service and take part in the installation of the national executive for the next three years.

The whole weekend was one of connecting with old friends and making so many new friendships Hats off with thanks and a grateful heart to our gracious hosts, the Cursillo community in Nanaimo for a wonderful weekend.

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Our rector, the Rev. Bob Albert, read a congratulatory letter from retired Bishop John Chapman, who spent his formative years here in Vankleek Hill. His father, the Rev. Donald Chapman, was our rector from 1963 to 1970, and his son attended public school and high school at Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute. In his letter, Bishop Chapman credited the people of Vankleek Hill parish; “for forming me well so that I too was able to become deeply rooted in faith, hold a desire for good works and a longing to exercise the ministry of Jesus.”

St. John’s has been blessed with 170 years of God’s faithfulness.

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Bishop Shane Parker thanked her for 14 years of service with the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, initially as senior manager with Cornerstone Housing for Women, followed by 10 years with the day programs (Centre 454, The Well, St Luke’s Table), which were amalgamated into Belong Ottawa in 2022. “We wish her every blessing for this new chapter of her life,” he wrote.

The Rev. Canon Dr. PJ Hobbs, director general of the Anglican Community Ministries, praised her as a “a transformative leader in our Community Ministries, leading a process that saw the merger of our three Ottawa day programs into one ministry. While such a feat speaks of Rachel’s organizational abilities, what I will always value most about Rachel is her vision and passion for supporting the most vulnerable in our midst. Her participant/client centred focus is rooted in compassion, thoughtfulness, and research—an inspiration and good reminder to us all.”

Belong Ottawa board chair Lorraine Tell said that a key area of Robinson’s impact has been “her presence and participation in the local social services network and advocacy agencies where she tirelessly offers her experience and works to be the voice for those who are in need and need support for their voices to be heard.”

Tell added that the staff and participants in the programs “feel Rachel’s impact every day; her focus on participants and her championing of the staff at Belong Ottawa are what make our programs so effective and what makes Belong Ottawa an organization that attracts the best staff in sector.”

Robinson grew up in Birmingham in the West Midlands in England and studied literature and drama at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth before earning a Masters of Science degree in psychology. In an interview with Crosstalk, she said didn’t know exactly what she wanted for her career, “but I always knew I wanted to try and make an impact … a difference.”

Her father had been a civil servant and her grandfather a police officer and following on that path, she knew she wanted to work in the public sector.

She began working with the British National Health Services as a management trainee at a time when they were closing psychiatric hospitals with the idea that people should live and be cared for in their communities. “At the time everyone believed community care was the answer,” she said, noting that the same policies were followed here in Canada. “There were bad things about those asylums, very bad things, but one of the functions that they did fulfill was that they housed people. Now, probably many of the people that live in shelters, downtown, would have lived in the psychiatric hospital previously…. There’s a shortage of good, supportive housing so now we’ve got a crisis downtown of 200 people every night sleeping outside.”

Robinson moved to Ottawa with her family because her husband worked with Nortel.  She started her work in Canada as a frontline worker with Ottawa family shelters and the Elizabeth Fry Society before being hired by Cornerstone Housing for Women to help open its Booth Street residence in 2011.

Four years later, she took on a role as interim executive director at The Well, which became permanent. In 2018, she became executive director of St. Luke’s Table also.

In March 2020, the executive director of Centre 454 left, and Canon Hobbs asked her to fill in while they hired a new director. But then the pandemic hit and suddenly she was in charge of all three ministries while they figured out how to continue to provide service in the midst of lockdowns.

“Rachel’s work to stabilize the three-sites day programs during the pandemic isolation period was instrumental to our participants who were suddenly without the basic services that were keeping them alive and connected during that difficult time,” Tell told Crosstalk.

They got a van and began delivering food to the people who used to come to all three locations, which also helped to mitigate loneliness and isolation.

“It was that feeling of all hands on deck. The team really pulled together. Everyone did what was needed in the moment,” Robinson recalls.

The pandemic was the biggest challenge she and the staff faced, but she says that now sees it as a highlight of their work together as well. “It was really difficult and a struggle and tiring…, but also there was a satisfaction of knowing that we were keeping the services going. We stayed open when other programs closed. So, for me, there’s a sense of pride and reward… You can learn and become stronger and grow from adversity.”

She said another highlight was renovating the St. Luke’s Table location, but the satisfaction of seeing that project completed was dashed soon after when a fire devastated St. Luke’s Anglican Church and St. Luke’s Table facilities in the basement. The satisfaction of seeing that restoration, which is still ongoing, will be for her successor, she says.

Robinson mentions her relationships with Belong Ottawa participants as another highlight.

“I’m still very on the ground and connected to participants…Having relationships with such a wide range of people … is really meaningful.”

In her retirement, she is looking forward to spending more time in the U.K. with her family, but she says she will take some time to just decompress. “I’m really just going to wait and see how I feel before I decide what I might do with my time next,” she says.

Congratulations and best wishes, Rachel!

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I wish the goal of this to be the lifting up and acknowledgment of people who all too often have fallen victim to the very identities “assigned” to them. What do I mean by this? Well, I’m talking about people who usually are not allowed to make a contribution to society….What I mean is the all too present problem of people’s worth being judged on their labels, the identity tags we slap on people every day of their lives. We judge people based on their most noticeable, or salient, characteristics. This is a short cut, a heuristic we employ all the time, for speed and efficiency. Unfortunately, however, its accuracy is extremely unreliable at best, and flat-out dead wrong at worst. For our most salient characteristics are rarely, if ever, our most important ones.

Think about it for a second. If you saw someone with a bad haircut, looking dishevelled with dirty clothes, and acting weird, would the first thought that came to your mind, or even the second or third, or umpteenth, be, ‘Hmmm, I wonder, could this person be a gifted piano player? Or artist? Or poet? Or anything thought distinguished, wonderful or “worthy”? My guess is no. That’s just what we do. And the way we think has effects, effects that are far-reaching.

So, I’d like to think that we have a chance here, an opportunity to put aside our prejudices and limiting mindsets, to allow ourselves to judge not only artistic creations, which often speak for themselves, but even more importantly ideas, based solely on the merit of the idea itself, and not on the social status, appearance, fashion sense or popularity of the idea’s creator.

I know this is hard. It is very easy to say but to implement? Not so much. The only thing I can say is that we have the opportunity to do so, both here and in the society as a whole. Too often people end up getting marginalized, getting pushed to the fringes of society. Too often we forget that for everyone, life should be about more than just eating, more than just getting the basic essentials of survival. [American psychologist Abraham] Maslow knew it—and so do I. We’re not put on this beautiful earth simply to mark time, simply to get through another meaningless day. We were put here to bloom—to blossom—to sing. Kudos to anyone who in any way helps make this possible for another. You are great—and you are blessed.

James Andriulaitis is an Ottawa-based poet.

There’s an added beauty

There’s an added beauty in flower, herb or tree,

that grows where it isn’t “supposed” to be —

a resistor to small-minded norm uniformity,

a rebel against the well-worn default conformity;

an outlier, a maverick, a defier of convention,

nature’s stand against man’s interference, man’s intervention.

Pansies flowering between cobblestones,

In lone stance displaying their vibrant tones;

Siberian elms growing from cracks in cement,

and in their expansion, pushing aside, buckling the pavement:

or in spring, Monarch’s soul food or other things thought weeds,

bursting through asphalt in a fresh vital vigour of green.

Manitoba, Ashleaf Maples enveloping chain-link fences,

mismanaged and thought the weed of trees,

they still have their defences;

Rock Elms rocking out between stones and concrete—

Though I’ve given you examples, it’s far from complete.

Even the moss I find engrossingly sublime,

and, with the lichens, are markers of “slow time.”

And, lest I forget, my most favourite of all,

sunflowers, sprouting from curbs, or between

sidewalk and beginning of bridge over river that I know

is certainly a sight to value, and for me does enthrall,

when in final flower they make their lovely show.

There’s an added beauty in flower, herb or tree,

that grows where it isn’t “supposed” to be,

that grows where it “doesn’t belong” —

It’s the power of life, growing free —

the power to sing its own song.

— James Andriulaitis

james andriulaitis@allpoetry.com

 Related story:  Library art exhibit showcases Belong Ottawa artists’ talent

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Launching the 6th annual exhibit with a celebratory vernissage on Aug. 14, Belong Ottawa’s community development manager Liz deMelo said, “It’s such a pleasure to be able to highlight the talent that exists in our community.”

She thanked the library and its staff for their support of the artists and Belong Ottawa.

“It’s just been such a wonderful relationship with the Ottawa Public Library. I know a lot of our folks spend a lot of time coming to the library,” she said, noting that it is a safe place where they can read and research. “They’ve made a lot of friends with a lot of the staff here because they’re compassionate and welcoming, so we’re grateful for that relationship that you have with a lot of our community members as well.”

Librarian Emily Porter said that the library was “thrilled to be collaborating again with our community partner and neighbour, Belong Ottawa.

It’s a privilege to host this annual exhibit and to celebrate the artists… I want to thank all the artists for sharing your art and your talent and your story with us. Without you, this wouldn’t be happening.”

DeMelo introduced the artists in attendance. “Donna has such enthusiasm, and the minute last year’s exhibit was over she started producing work already for this year. And so I’m always excited to see the pieces that she produces and how her work has developed….It’s beautiful and so intricate.

Donna described the three brightly coloured paintings that were in front of the gathered guests and then thanked the other participating artists with special thanks reserved for deMelo. “If it wasn’t for Liz we wouldn’t have this. …You are wonderful.”

George spoke about the very personal meaning of his art. “My partner passed away 13 years ago and this is one of the memories of him. I’m really glad I can do art for him,” he said.

Introducing Aimee, deMelo thanked her for “enriching the programming at our Belong at the Well site. She facilitates art classes for the participants that come there in the evening, who would otherwise probably not really have a lot to do besides having a safe place to be. It’s also nice to be engaged in meaningful activities. She has a steady following of about 10 to 12 people each evening, so thank you for that.”

Aimee showed the guests two ink drawings of wolves that had been her pets, noting that wolves are much maligned and she would have wolves as pets again “in a heartbeat.” She explained that she does art in many other styles and does not want to be limited by categories. “I have no boundaries,” she said. ”I just do what I want to do and see what comes out, so some days there’s abstract and that’s fine, and other days it’s realism. This is more portraiture, but I encourage the people at The Well to just express themselves. Everybody says, ‘Oh I can’t draw, I can’t join your group, I’m not an artist.’ Uh, uh uh…. Every one of you is an artist,” she reassured those in attendance.

Related article: We are put here to bloom, to sing

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