Wright in the Laurentian Hills

Something looks familiar about this rural house of worship, but it is hard to place at first. Wright, of course, is the name of the family of Philemon Wright who came from Woburn, Massachusetts to found a wilderness agricultural utopia on the Ottawa River 223 years ago. The settlement on the Ottawa River was known at various times throughout its history as Columbia Falls Village, Hull, Wrightstown, Wrightville and latterly Gatineau, but the Wright we see here alludes to a remote station developed as the Wright family bailed out their flagging agricultural utopia by engaging in the timber industry.

Wright as a centre of Anglican worship first emerged as an outstation of the Mission of Aylwin. We are told that Anglican services were first held here in 1874 in a settler’s house.  Construction of a church in Wright Township began in 1884, and the house of worship we see here was opened for Divine Service in 1885. Saint James’s Church, Wright was consecrated by Bishop William Bennett Bond of Montreal on 23 August 1885.  

At first glance, Saint James’s Church is an auditory box reminiscent of the earliest churches in the Diocese built before 1850. We do not see the separate chancel wing at the back. Details of this house of worship are congruent with most early churches: the church was placed square with the road passing by its front door, it was located in the middle of a burial ground, and its main entrance was placed symmetrically front and centre beneath a gable wall.

Members of Saint James’s Church, it must be pointed out, were not deliberately attempting to resurrect the design of early churches. They had very practical needs in their house of worship and built accordingly. It was not the stress of agriculture on the Laurentian Hills frontier that produced the only cumbered entrance in the entire Diocese, but rather a local planing mill. The sizeable entryway allowed worshippers to remove winter coats before proceeding into the church proper. The lancet side windows both in the church proper and in the porch together with the steep gables and chancel wing tell us the builders were not adverse to the inroads of the Gothic Revival, but they saw no necessity to slavishly follow its precepts.

It is the tower (or non-tower) atop the front of Saint James’s Church that looks so familiar. Why? We have seen a comparable composition on Holy Trinity Church, Danford Lake, albeit constructed some fifteen years after Saint James’s. Was Holy Trinity copying the design of Saint James’s, or had the clergymen responsible for building both churches in the Deanery of Clarendon influenced the builders of both houses of worship to echo the gables on the earlier Saint Paul’s Church, Shawville that faced the four points of the compass?   

So much for design questions. In 1919, Saint James’s was transferred to the six-point parish of River Desert. In 1966, after being transferred from the Diocese of Montreal to the Diocese of Ottawa, the Parish of Aylwin was reorganized, becoming part of a five-point parish comprising Danford Lake, Joseph Farm, Kazabazua, Maniwaki (River Desert) and Wright. In 2001, Saint James’s, Wright was designated a memorial church, meaning it met less frequently as a worshipping congregation.

Documents the Archives collects for parishes include parish registers, vestry reports, service registers, minutes of groups and committees, financial documents, property records (including cemeteries and architectural plans), insurance policies, letters, pew bulletins, photographs and paintings, scrapbooks, parish newsletters.