Anglican Church of Canada
Encyclopedia
The Anglican Church of Canada (ACC or ACoC) is the Province of the Anglican Communion
in Canada
. The official French name is l'Église Anglicane du Canada. The ACC is the third largest church in Canada after the Roman Catholic Church
and the United Church of Canada
, consisting of 800,000 registered members worshipping in 30 diocese
s. The 2001 Canadian Census counted 2,035,500 self-identified Anglicans or 6.9 percent of the total Canadian population. According to the census, 48 percent of self-identified Anglicans live in Ontario
.
Until 1955, the Anglican Church of Canada was known as the Church of England in the Dominion of Canada, or simply the Church of England in Canada. In 1977, the church's General Synod adopted l'Église Episcopale du Canada as its French
-language name. This name was replaced with the current one, l'Église Anglicane du Canada, in 1989; however, the former name is still used in some places along with the new one.
A matter of some confusion for Anglicans elsewhere in the world is that while the Anglican Church of Canada is a province of the Anglican Communion, the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada
is merely one of four such ecclesiastical provinces of the Anglican Church of Canada. This confusion is furthered by the fact that Canada has ten civil provinces along with three territories.
In recent years, there have been attempts by splinter groups to incorporate under very similar names. Corporations Canada
, the agency of the federal government which has jurisdiction over federally incorporated companies, ruled on 12 September 2005 that a group of dissident Anglicans may not use the name Anglican Communion in Canada, holding that in Canada the term Anglican Communion is associated only with the Anglican Church of Canada, being the Canadian denomination which belongs to that international body.
When John Cabot
landed in North America on 24 June 1497, there may have been some sort of religious service — it was St. John the Baptist's Day and the day was likely not a coincidence — yet there is no extant record. In any case, Cabot sailed under the authority of King Henry VII
and the English Church was not yet separated from the See of Rome. The Anglican Church of Canada's Prayer Book commemorates John Cabot's landing in Newfoundland on 24 June.
The first Church of England
service recorded on British North America
n soil was a celebration of Holy Communion at Frobisher Bay
in the last days of August or early September 1578. The Anglican Church of Canada's Prayer Book fixes the day of commemoration as 3 September. The chaplain on Martin Frobisher
's voyage to the Arctic
was "'Maister Wolfall (probably Robert Wolfall
), minister and preacher', who had been charged by Queen Elizabeth 'to serve God twice a day'".
The first service read from the Book of Common Prayer
on American soil occurred in 19 June 1579 in a harbour just north of San Francisco, when the crew of Sir Francis Drake's ship the Golden Hind
landed. Drake named the new land Nova Albion or New Albion
and claimed it for Queen Elizabeth I. The generally accepted landing site is at Drake's Cove in Drakes Bay
although more than a score of other locations have been offered. Drake and his crew stayed in this now lost harbour for over five weeks, repairing the Golden Hind.
The propagation of the Church of England occurred in three ways. One way was by officers of ships and lay military and civil officials reading services from the Book of Common Prayer regularly when no clergy were present. For example, in the charter issued by Charles I for Newfoundland
in 1633 was this directive: "On Sundays Divine Service to be said by some of the Masters of ships, such prayers as are in the Book of Common Prayer". A second way was the direct appointing and employing of clergy by the English government on ships and in settlements. A third way was the employment of clergy by private "adventurous" companies.
The first Church of England parish
in British North America
was founded in Jamestown, Virginia
, in 1607 under the charter of the Virginia Company of London. The Hudson's Bay Company
sent out its first chaplain in 1683, and where there was no chaplain the officers of the company were directed to read prayers from the BCP on Sundays. The first "documented" resident Church of England clergy-man on Canadian soil was Erasmus Stourton
who arrived at the "Sea Forest Plantation" at Ferryland
, Newfoundland in 1612 under the patronage of Lords Bacon
and Baltimore
. Stourton was of the Puritan
party and remained in Ferryland until returning to England in 1628.
The over-seas development of the Church of England in British North America challenged the insular view of the Church at home. The editors of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer found that they had to address the spiritual concerns of the contemporary adventurer. In the 1662 Preface, the editors note:
Members of the Church of England established the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in 1698, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) in 1701, and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1799. These and other organizations directly financed and sent missionaries to establish the English Church in Canada and to convert Canada's First Nations
people. Direct aid of this sort lasted up to the 1940s.
The first Anglican church in Newfoundland and in Canada was the small garrison chapel at St John's Fort built sometime before 1698. The first continuously resident clergyman of the chapel was the Reverend John Jackson - a Royal Navy chaplain who had settled in St. John's
and was supported (but not financially) by the SPCK in 1698. In 1701, the SPG took over the patronage of St John's. Jackson continued to receive little actual support and was replaced by the Reverend Jacob Rice in 1709. Rice wrote a letter to the Bishop of London
detailing his efforts to repair the church which had been "most unchristianly defaced" and asking for help in acquiring communion vessels, a pulpit cloth, surplices and glass for the windows. The garrison chapel was replaced in 1720 and in 1759. The Cathedral of St John the Baptist
in St John's, Newfoundland, is the oldest Anglican parish in Canada, founded in 1699 in response to a petition drafted by the Anglican townsfolk of St John's and sent to the Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Henry Compton.
As Newfoundland did not join the Confederation until 1949, continuous Anglican services in Canada used to be dated from 1710 when a New England army from Boston with assistance of the Royal Navy captured for the fourth time Port Royal
in Nova Scotia
and renamed it Annapolis Royal. When Annapolis was captured, one of the chaplains, the Reverend John Harrison, held a service of thanksgiving with the Reverend Samuel Hesker, the chaplain of the Marines, preaching the sermon. When the war ended in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht
, Harrison continued to act as Chaplain to the Garrison at Annapolis Royal.
The oldest Anglican church in Canada still standing is St Paul's Church
in Halifax, Nova Scotia, whose foundation stone - the church is a wood structure - was laid by the Nova Scotia governor on 13 June 1750. St. Paul's opened for services on 2 September 1750 with an SPG clergyman, the Reverend William Tutty, preaching.. St Paul's became the first Anglican cathedral in all of North America when Charles Inglis was appointed bishop in 1787. It has been a parish church since 1864 when another church was made the cathedral of the Nova Scotian diocese.
split the Church of England in North America. One of many consequences of the revolution was establishment of a North American episcopacy. The first Anglican bishop in North America was Samuel Seabury who was consecrated by the Scottish Episcopal Church
on 14 November 1784 because the Church of England had no legal mechanism to appoint a bishop outside of England. The Anglican Church of Canada's Book of Alternative Services commemorates Seabury on 14 November.
Anglicans were numerous among the United Empire Loyalists who fled to Canada after the American Revolution and the Anglican Church was a dominant feature of the compact government
s that presided over the colonies in British North America.
One of the former Americans was Charles Inglis who was rector of Trinity Church
in New York when George Washington
was in the congregation. He became the first bishop of the diocese of Nova Scotia
on 12 August 1787 and the first Church of England bishop of a diocese outside of the United Kingdom and in the British Empire. The Anglican Church of Canada's Prayer Book commemorates Inglis on 12 August.
The historical connections between The Episcopal Church in the U.S. and the Anglican Church of Canada are very close. Seabury and Inglis knew each other. In fact, on March 8 and then on the 21st of 1783, a group of eighteen clergy - most prominent was the Reverend Charles Inglis - met in New York to discuss the future of Nova Scotia, including plans for the appointment of a bishop in Nova Scotia and the college that would in time become the University of King's College
, Halifax.
They nominated a Dr T.B. Chandler to be the bishop of Nova Scotia (who would later decline), and a little while later Seabury was nominated to be bishop of Connecticut. After Seabury's consecration in Aberdeen, Scotland, he even returned via Halifax and visited his brother at Annapolis.
To digress for a moment, the connections between the now administratively separated churches continued in many ways. Two illustrations will suffice. In the summer of 1857, Bishop Scott of Oregon visited Victoria and confirmed twenty candidates as the first British Columbian bishop would not be appointed for another two years. From the 1890s to 1902, the Reverend Henry Irving - Father Pat - was licensed in both the Diocese of Kootenay and the Diocese of Spokane
- the two dioceses meet at the border between B.C. and the state of Washington. As Father Pat told his friends, he was:
After the conquest of Quebec
and the American Revolution, many leading Anglicans argued for the Church of England to become the established church in the Canadian colonies. The Constitutional Act of 1791
was promulgated, and interpreted to mean that the Church was the established Church in the Canadas
. The Church of England was established by law in Nova Scotia
, New Brunswick
and Prince Edward Island
. In Lower Canada
, the presence of a Roman Catholic majority made establishment in that province politically unwise. Bishop John Strachan
of Toronto was a particular champion of the prerogatives of the Church of England.
The secular history of Canada depicts Bishop Strachan as an ally of the landed gentry of the so-called Family Compact
of Upper Canada
, opposed to the political aspirations of farmers and bourgeoisie for responsible government
. Nonetheless, Strachan played considerable part in promoting education, as founder of Kings College (now the University of Toronto
) and Trinity College
. The Clergy reserves, land that had been reserved for use by the Protestant clergy
, became a major issue in the mid-19th century. Anglicans argued that the land was meant for their exclusive use, while other Protestant denominations demanded that it be divided among them.
In Upper Canada, leading dissenters such as Methodist minister Egerton Ryerson
— in due course a minister of education in the government of Ontario
— agitated against establishment. Following the Upper Canada Rebellion
, the creation of the united Province of Canada
, and the implementation of responsible government in the 1840s, the unpopularity of the Anglican-dominated Family Compact
made establishment a moot point. The Church was disestablished
in Nova Scotia in 1850 and Upper Canada in 1854. By the time of Confederation
in 1867, the Church of England was disestablished throughout British North America
.
Until the 1830s, the Anglican church in Canada was synonymous with the Church of England
: bishops were appointed and priests supplied by the church in England, and funding for the church came from the British Parliament. The first Canadian synod
s were established in the 1850s, giving the Canadian church a degree of self-government. As a result of the Privy Council
decision of Long v. Gray in 1861, all Anglican churches in colonies of the British Empire
became self-governing. Even so, the first General Synod
for all of Canada was not held until 1893. That first synod made the Solemn Declaration 1893, which describes how the Church of England in Canada is related to "the Church of England throughout the world" and "the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church". Robert Machray
was chosen as the Canadian church's first Primate
.
in 1867, so too did the Anglican Church. After the establishment of the first ecclesiastical province
— that of Canada
in 1860 — others followed. The first was the Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert's Land
, created in 1875 to encompass Anglican dioceses outside what were then the boundaries of Canada: present-day Northern Ontario and Northern Quebec, the western provinces, and the Territories. In the forty years between self-government in 1861 and 1900, sixteen of the presently existing dioceses were created, as numbers blossomed with accelerating immigration from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The far-flung nature of settlement in the North-West together with a shortage of resources to pay stipendiary clergy early led to a significant reliance on women lay workers, deemed "deaconesses," for missionary outreach, a phenomenon which made the eventual ordination of women to the priesthood in 1976 relatively uncontroversial.
During this time, the Anglican Church assumed de facto administrative responsibility in the far-flung wilderness of Canada and British North America. The church contracted with colonial officials and later the federal Crown to administer residential schools
for the indigenous peoples
of the First Nations
— a decision which would come back to haunt it much later. Such schools removed children from their home communities in an attempt to, among other things, assimilate them into the dominant European culture and language: the merits and demerits of that system in a broad sense, such as they were, have latterly been entirely overwhelmed by the issue of the wholly reprehensible abuse of some of its child wards by sexually disordered mission personnel. At the same time, Anglican missionaries were involved in advocating for First Nations rights and land claims on behalf of those people to whom they were ministering (for example, the Nisga'a
of northern British Columbia
). One of the earliest First Nations students to be educated at Red River
in the 1830s was Henry Budd. He was ordained in 1850 and was the first First Nations priest and became the missionary at Fort Cumberland on the Saskatchewan River and then to the post of The Pas. The Anglican Church of Canada's Prayer Book commemorates Henry Budd on 2 April.
Despite this growth in both the size and role of the church, progress was intermittently undermined by internal conflict over churchmanship
. This was manifested in the creation of competing theological schools (Trinity versus Wycliffe Colleges in the University of Toronto, for example), a refusal by bishops of one ecclesiastical party to ordain those of the other, and — in the most extreme cases — schism. This latter phenomenon was famously and acrimoniously borne out in the high profile defection of Edward Cridge, the Dean of the Diocese of [British] Columbia in Victoria, B.C., together with much of his cathedral congregation, to the Reformed Episcopal Church
in 1874, although the movement was ultimately confined to that one congregation in a then-remote town together with a second parish in New Westminster, the then-capital of the originally separate mainland colony of British Columbia.
A Church of England conference held in Winnipeg
in August 1890 established the union of all synods.
movement, and the Christian socialism
of elements in the Church of England
increasingly were felt. This influence would eventually result in the creation of what would come to be known as the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund, in 1958.
By the middle of the century, pressure to reform the structures of the church were being felt. The name of the church was changed in 1955 from "The Church of England in Canada" to the "Anglican Church of Canada," and a major revision of the Book of Common Prayer
was undertaken in 1962 — the first in over forty years. In 1962, the United Church of Canada
and Anglican Church of Canada
jointly published Growth in Understanding, a study guide on union, and on June 1, 1965 the Principles of Union between the United Church and the Anglican Church. Despite these changes, the church was still perceived as complacent and disengaged — a view emphasized by the title of Pierre Berton
's best-selling commissioned analysis of the denomination, The Comfortable Pew, published in 1965.
Change became more rapid towards the close of the 1960s, as mainline churches including the Anglicans began to see the first wave of evaporation from the pews. On August 23, 1967, the Anglican Church of Canada agreed to permit the remarriage of divorced persons in their churches. Ecumenical relationships were intensified, with a view to full communion
. While negotiations with the largest Canadian Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada
, faltered in the early 1970s, the Anglican Church did achieve full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
as the century drew to a close. New liturgical resources were introduced, which would culminate in the publication of the Book of Alternative Services
in 1985. Agitation for the ordination of women led to the vote on June 18, 1975 by the Anglican Church of Canada in favour of ordination as priests, and - eventually - bishops. And social and cultural change led to the church's decision to marry divorce
d couples, endorse certain forms of contraception
, and moves towards greater inclusion of gay and lesbian
people in the life of the church.
and derivatives) which embody its doctrine, other Reformation formularies (the Ordinal, the Thirty-Nine Articles
, and the First and Second Book of Homilies
) and a shared theological tradition. Other instruments of unity in the Anglican Communion are, locally, its bishops and, internationally, the Archbishop of Canterbury
, and, more recently, the Lambeth Conferences
, the Anglican Communion Primates' Meeting
, and the biannual Anglican Consultative Council
. These last four instruments of unity have moral but not legislative authority over individual Provinces.
In Canada, Anglican bishops have divested some of their authority to three bodies - the General Synod, the Provincial Synod (there are 4 in Canada) and the Diocesan Synod (there are 29).
The national church in Canada is structured on the typical Anglican model of a presiding archbishop (the Primate
) and Synod
.
Recently the church has considered rationalizing its increasingly top-heavy episcopal structure as its membership wanes, which could mean a substantial reduction in the number of dioceses, bishops and cathedrals.
(the former territory of Lower Canada, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland) — is elected by General Synod from among all the bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada. Primates hold the ex officio rank of archbishop; in 1931 the General Synod approved a recommendation that a fixed primatial See
(as of the Archbishop of Canterbury) be established and in 1955 it was recommended that "a small See [be created] in the vicinity of Ottawa to which the Dioceses of The Arctic, Moosonee, Keewatin and Yukon would be attached, forming a fifth Province." However, General Synod rejected the proposal in 1959 and in 1969 "the Canon on the Primacy was amended to require the Primate to maintain an office at the national headquarters of the Church, with a pastoral relationship to the whole Church, but no fixed Primatial See" as with Presiding Bishops of the Episcopal Church of the USA and unlike Primates of England, Australia and elsewhere. In consequence, Primates of the Anglican Church of Canada are not diocesan bishops and generally do not carry out ordinary episcopal functions; they originally held office for life but in recent years they have retired by the age of 70.
In recent decades Primates of the ACC have intermittently held a considerable place in public life. In particular, Archbishop Ted Scott
, who was a President of the World Council of Churches
, was a member of a Commonwealth
Eminent Persons committee in respect of the devolution of power from the white-only government of South Africa
to a fully democratic government. Scott's successor, Michael Peers
, continued the close association with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and was thrust into a high profile in Canadian national life when he insisted that the ACC should shoulder its responsibilities for the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools
, and when he protested at what he described as the downplaying of Christian witness in the official commemoration of events of national importance.
There have been twelve primates in the history of the church. The current Primate is the Most Rev. Fred Hiltz
, formerly Bishop of the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, elected on the fifth ballot at the June, 2007 General Synod.
. The Declaration of Principles in the General Synod Handbook contains: the Solemn Declaration 1893; the Basis of Constitution; and the Fundamental Principles previously adopted by the Synod in 1893 and these constitute the foundation of the Synod structure. The General Synod meets triennially and consists of lay people, clergy, and bishops from each of the 29 diocese
s. In-between General Synods, the day-to-day affairs of the ACC are administered by a group elected by General Synod, called the Council of General Synod (COGS), which consults with and directs national staff working at the church's headquarters in Toronto
.
Each diocese holds annual diocesan synod
s from which lay and clergy delegates are elected as representatives to General Synod
, the national deliberative body, which meets triennially. These delegates join the Primate and the bishops of the church to form three Orders - lay, clergy, and bishops. The most recent general synod was in 2007 and met in Winnipeg
.
General Synod has authority to define "the doctrines of the Church in harmony with the Solemn Declaration 1893", and over matters of discipline, and canon law
of the national church, in addition to more prosaic matters of administration and policy. At each diocesan synod, the three houses elect representatives to sit on the Council of General Synod, which — with the Primate — acts as the governing authority of the national church in-between synods.
s - British Columbia and the Yukon
, Canada
(encompassing the Atlantic provinces and Quebec
), Ontario
, and Rupert's Land
(encompassing the prairie provinces, Nunavut
, the Northwest Territories
, and portions of Ontario). Within the provinces are 29 diocese
s and one grouping of churches in British Columbia that functions equivalently to a diocese.
Each province
has its own archbishop
, known as the Metropolitan
, and each diocese has a bishop
, although there are no metropolitical dioceses (or archdioceses) as such; a metropolitan is styled "Archbishop of [his or her own diocese], and Metropolitan of [the ecclesiastical province]."
As with other churches in the Anglican tradition, each diocese is divided up into geographical regions called parishes, where certain authority resides in the rector or priest-in-charge (as laid out in the induction service, the ordinal, and the cleric's licence) and in the parish council (or vestry) as defined in diocesan canons. The legal relationship between a parish and its diocese and between a parish and its synod varies around the country and even within dioceses depending in part on when each was established.
Both dioceses and provinces hold synods, usually annually, consisting of the active diocesan clergy and lay delegates elected by parish churches. Diocesan synods elect lay and clergy delegates to provincial synod. On the diocesan level, there are effectively two houses instead of three — clergy and laity — with the diocesan bishop required to give assent to motions passed by synod.
and Archbishop Ted Scott
was a president of that body; the ACC has been an active participant in the Canadian Council of Churches
from its establishment immediately after the Second World War. Through the 1960s the ACC was involved in talks with the United Church of Canada
and the Disciples of Christ with a view to institutional union, in the course of which a comprehensive Plan of Union was formulated and a joint Anglican-United Church hymnal produced in 1971. Ultimately such talks foundered when the Houses of Laity and Clergy voted in favour of union but the House of Bishops vetoed it, largely due to concerns over the maintenance of the Apostolic Succession
of the episcopacy.
More recently, in 2001, the ACC established full communion
with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
(ELCIC). Contrary to the practice in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox communions, all baptized Christians are welcome to receive Holy Communion in Canadian Anglican churches, in accordance with the resolution in favour of open communion
at the 1968 Lambeth Conference.
Through the Anglican Communion, the ACC is also in full communion with the churches of the Old Catholic Utrecht Union
(represented by St. John's Cathedral, Toronto
), the Mar Thoma Church
, and the Philippine Independent Church
. Unlike the Anglican Churches of the British Isles, it is not a signatory to the Porvoo Agreement which established full communion between those bodies and a number of European Lutheran churches.
In 1918 and 1962 the ACC produced successive authoritative Canadian Prayer Books, substantially based on the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer
(BCP); both were conservative revisions consisting largely of minor editorial emendations of archaic diction. In 1985 the Book of Alternative Services
(BAS) was issued, officially not designated to supersede but to be used alongside the 1962 Prayer Book. It is a more thoroughgoing modernizing of Canadian Anglican liturgies, containing considerable borrowings from Lutheran, Church of England, American Episcopal and liberal Roman Catholic service books; it was received with general enthusiasm and in practice has largely supplanted the Book of Common Prayer, although the BCP remains the official Liturgy of the Church in Canada. A French translation, Le Recueil des Prières de la Communauté Chrétienne, was published in 1967. The preference for the BAS among many parishes and clergy has been countered by the founding of the Prayer Book Society of Canada
, which seeks "to promote the understanding and use of the BCP as a spiritual system of nurture for life in Christ". The tension between adherents of the BCP and advocates of the BAS has contributed to a sense of disaffection within the Church. There have been increasing calls for revision of the Book of Alternative Services. Those who use the BAS have cited various shortcomings as it ages and newer liturgies are produced elsewhere in the Communion. At the 2007 General Synod, a resolution was passed which will begin the process of revising the modern language liturgies.
Hymnody is an important aspect of worship in Anglicanism, and the ACC is no different. There is no one hymnal required to be used, although the ACC has produced four successive authorized versions since 1908. The most recent, Common Praise, was published in 1998. Anglican plainsong
is represented in the new hymnal, as well as in the older Canadian Psalter, published in 1963. Notable Canadian Anglican hymnists include Derek Holman
, Gordon Light, Herbert O'Driscoll, and Healey Willan
. For a time, beginning in the early 1970s, many Anglican congregations experimented with The Hymn Book produced jointly with the United Church of Canada
under the direction of Canadian composer F. R. C. Clarke
, but both churches have since abandoned the common hymnal.
Like most churches of the Anglican Communion, the ACC was beset by intense conflict over the ritualism controversies of the latter 19th century, leading in some extreme cases to schism. Throughout much of the 20th century, parishes - and, to a certain extent, dioceses or regions - were more or less divided between high church
(Anglo-Catholic), low church
(evangelical), and broad church
(middle-of-the-road). Many of these designations have become muted with time, as the passions which fired the debate have cooled and most parishes have found a happy medium or accommodation.
, argued at the Lambeth Conference in favour of women's ordination
. The ACC ordained its first female priest in 1976 and its first female bishop in 1993. Many parishes, particularly in the west and even more particularly on aboriginal reserves, were already served by women deacons and allowing them to be ordained priests regularized their situation and permitted a regular sacramental ministry to be available in the parishes they served. Nonetheless, this change — in concert with such moves as allowing the remarriage of divorced persons — caused strains among more conservative parishes, both Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical. In the early 1970s some members of the ACC left to join breakaway Anglican groups such as the small Anglican Catholic Church of Canada
.
stance on abortion. The official policy is that "abortion is always the taking of a human life and, in our view, should never be done except for serious therapeutic reasons." In 1989, the ACC stated that "In the light of the Government’s announcement of a new Abortion Bill, the Anglican Church reaffirms its position that both the rights and needs of women, and the rights and needs of the unborn, require protection." The ACC also opposes firmly euthanasia and assisted suicide. They also condemn the death penalty.
of British Columbia
) voted to permit the blessing of same-sex unions by parishes requesting authorization to do so.
were brought by former students of such schools against both the Crown and church organizations in respect of abuse by sexually disordered church personnel in such institutions and to a lesser extent in respect of a perception that such schools had been insensitive to issues of preservation of aboriginal culture and identity.
The claims were ultimately comprehensively settled but the damage to the morale of the ACC has yet to be entirely resolved: the Diocese of Cariboo was obliged to declare bankruptcy and was liquidated — its current manifestation is as "the Anglican parishes of the central interior", with episcopal oversight by an assistant bishop to the metropolitan Archbishop of the Province of British Columbia and the Yukon. (Its now-unofficial cathedral of St Paul in Kamloops continues to be deemed a cathedral, its rector being styled "very reverend," as a dean.
). The Diocese of Qu'Appelle and the General Synod of the ACC were in considerable danger of the same fate until settlement of the claims was reached on a national basis. Archbishop Michael Peers
took a major role on behalf of the ACC with respect to reaching a settlement with the federal Crown, which was the defendant of the first instance and which counter-claimed against the ACC and Roman Catholic religious orders. He offered the ACC's apology to aboriginal people and delayed his retirement until 2004 when his successor could come to the primacy with the issue also retired.
In January 2007 the ACC announced the appointment of the Right Reverend Mark MacDonald, an aboriginal American with principal episcopal responsibilities in Alaska, as the National Indigenous Bishop with pastoral oversight over all indigenous members of the Anglican Church of Canada.
The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Quebec City is the oldest Anglican cathedral in Canada that continues in that capacity, having been "built from 1800 to 1804; it was constructed according to drawings done by Captain William Hall and Major William Robe, officers of the military engineering corps of the British Army, stationed in Quebec City."
Most Anglican cathedrals in Canada are modest parish churches and it is only the cathedrals of Toronto
, Halifax
, St. John's
, and Victoria which have significant dimensions or imposing designs, though even they are modest by European or even Australian
standards. Diocesan services are often held in Roman Catholic or United churches because of the limited seating in most Anglican cathedrals. Christ Church Cathedral, Ottawa
, while not having any official national status either secularly or ecclesially like that of Canterbury Cathedral
in England and Washington National Cathedral
in the USA, is the usual venue for state occasions requiring an ecclesiastical setting, such as state funerals for non-Roman Catholics. Christ's Church Cathedral, Hamilton is the oldest cathedral of Upper Canada
, its present building having originally been constructed in 1842, though its curious, evolutionary construction history has left none of the original fabric extant. Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal
is notable for having a shopping mall (Promenades Cathédrale
) and Metro
station (McGill
) underneath it.
in Toronto was the home parish of the organist and composer Healey Willan
, who composed much of his liturgical music for its choirs. It is the inspiration for the parish of St Aiden in Robertson Davies
's novel The Cunning Man
. St. Thomas'
, Toronto, was at one time the parish church of the English accompanist Gerald Moore
, who was an assistant organist there. The hymn tune
"Bellwoods" by James Hopkirk, sung to the hymn "O day of God draw nigh," by the Canadian theologian Robert B.Y. Scott
, was named for St. Matthias Bellwoods
, in Toronto, where Hopkirk was organist. St Anne's, Toronto, is a notable tourist attraction, being "a scale model of Saint Sophia in Istanbul that was decorated in the 1920s by members of the Group of Seven
and associates." St John's, Elora, is a concert venue of the Elora Music Festival; its choir, also known as the Elora Festival Singers, is the professional core of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir
and its CDs are available around the world. St Bartholomew's
, Ottawa, located near to Rideau Hall
and also known as the Guards Chapel has been the place of worship for Governors General of the Canadas
and then Canada since 1866, before the wider confederation of the British North American colonies.
Her Majesty's Royal Chapel of the Mohawks
in Brantford, Ontario
, and Christ Church, Her Majesty's Chapel Royal of the Mohawks
, near Deseronto, Ontario
are the only two Chapels Royal
in Canada, the latter being elevated to that status by Queen Elizabeth II
in 2004.
Anglican Communion
The Anglican Communion is an international association of national and regional Anglican churches in full communion with the Church of England and specifically with its principal primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury...
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. The official French name is l'Église Anglicane du Canada. The ACC is the third largest church in Canada after the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
and the United Church of Canada
United Church of Canada
The United Church of Canada is a Protestant Christian denomination in Canada. It is the largest Protestant church and, after the Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest Christian church in Canada...
, consisting of 800,000 registered members worshipping in 30 diocese
Diocese
A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...
s. The 2001 Canadian Census counted 2,035,500 self-identified Anglicans or 6.9 percent of the total Canadian population. According to the census, 48 percent of self-identified Anglicans live in Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
.
Official names
Canadian French
Canadian French is an umbrella term referring to the varieties of French spoken in Canada. French is the mother tongue of nearly seven million Canadians, a figure constituting roughly 22% of the national population. At the federal level it has co-official status alongside English...
-language name. This name was replaced with the current one, l'Église Anglicane du Canada, in 1989; however, the former name is still used in some places along with the new one.
A matter of some confusion for Anglicans elsewhere in the world is that while the Anglican Church of Canada is a province of the Anglican Communion, the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada
Ecclesiastical Province of Canada
The Ecclesiastical Province of Canada was founded in 1860 and is one of four ecclesiastical provinces in the Anglican Church of Canada. Despite its name, the province covers only the former territory of Lower Canada , the Maritimes, and Newfoundland and Labrador...
is merely one of four such ecclesiastical provinces of the Anglican Church of Canada. This confusion is furthered by the fact that Canada has ten civil provinces along with three territories.
In recent years, there have been attempts by splinter groups to incorporate under very similar names. Corporations Canada
Corporations Canada
Corporations Canada is the government agency of Industry Canada responsible for incorporation of Canadian businesses and "corporate laws governing federal companies, except for financial intermediaries".- Statutes :* Canada Business Corporations Act...
, the agency of the federal government which has jurisdiction over federally incorporated companies, ruled on 12 September 2005 that a group of dissident Anglicans may not use the name Anglican Communion in Canada, holding that in Canada the term Anglican Communion is associated only with the Anglican Church of Canada, being the Canadian denomination which belongs to that international body.
Anglicanism in British North America
John Cabot
John Cabot was an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of parts of North America is commonly held to have been the first European encounter with the continent of North America since the Norse Vikings in the eleventh century...
landed in North America on 24 June 1497, there may have been some sort of religious service — it was St. John the Baptist's Day and the day was likely not a coincidence — yet there is no extant record. In any case, Cabot sailed under the authority of King Henry VII
Henry VII of England
Henry VII was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, as the first monarch of the House of Tudor....
and the English Church was not yet separated from the See of Rome. The Anglican Church of Canada's Prayer Book commemorates John Cabot's landing in Newfoundland on 24 June.
The first Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
service recorded on British North America
British North America
British North America is a historical term. It consisted of the colonies and territories of the British Empire in continental North America after the end of the American Revolutionary War and the recognition of American independence in 1783.At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 the British...
n soil was a celebration of Holy Communion at Frobisher Bay
Frobisher Bay
Frobisher Bay is a relatively large inlet of the Labrador Sea in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. It is located in the southeastern corner of Baffin Island...
in the last days of August or early September 1578. The Anglican Church of Canada's Prayer Book fixes the day of commemoration as 3 September. The chaplain on Martin Frobisher
Martin Frobisher
Sir Martin Frobisher was an English seaman who made three voyages to the New World to look for the Northwest Passage...
's voyage to the Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
was "'Maister Wolfall (probably Robert Wolfall
Robert Wolfall
The priest Robert Wolfall, chaplain to Martin Frobisher's expedition to the Arctic, celebrated the first Anglican Eucharist on what is now Canadian territory in 1578 in Frobisher Bay....
), minister and preacher', who had been charged by Queen Elizabeth 'to serve God twice a day'".
The first service read from the Book of Common Prayer
Book of Common Prayer
The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
on American soil occurred in 19 June 1579 in a harbour just north of San Francisco, when the crew of Sir Francis Drake's ship the Golden Hind
Golden Hind
The Golden Hind was an English galleon best known for its circumnavigation of the globe between 1577 and 1580, captained by Sir Francis Drake...
landed. Drake named the new land Nova Albion or New Albion
New Albion
New Albion, also known as Nova Albion, was the name of the region of the Pacific coast of North America explored by Sir Francis Drake and claimed by him for England in 1579...
and claimed it for Queen Elizabeth I. The generally accepted landing site is at Drake's Cove in Drakes Bay
Drakes Bay
Drakes Bay is a small bay on the coast of northern California in the United States, approximately 30 miles northwest of San Francisco at approximately 38 degrees north latitude. The bay is approximately 8 miles wide...
although more than a score of other locations have been offered. Drake and his crew stayed in this now lost harbour for over five weeks, repairing the Golden Hind.
The propagation of the Church of England occurred in three ways. One way was by officers of ships and lay military and civil officials reading services from the Book of Common Prayer regularly when no clergy were present. For example, in the charter issued by Charles I for Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
in 1633 was this directive: "On Sundays Divine Service to be said by some of the Masters of ships, such prayers as are in the Book of Common Prayer". A second way was the direct appointing and employing of clergy by the English government on ships and in settlements. A third way was the employment of clergy by private "adventurous" companies.
The first Church of England parish
Parish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...
in British North America
British North America
British North America is a historical term. It consisted of the colonies and territories of the British Empire in continental North America after the end of the American Revolutionary War and the recognition of American independence in 1783.At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 the British...
was founded in Jamestown, Virginia
Jamestown, Virginia
Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
, in 1607 under the charter of the Virginia Company of London. The Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...
sent out its first chaplain in 1683, and where there was no chaplain the officers of the company were directed to read prayers from the BCP on Sundays. The first "documented" resident Church of England clergy-man on Canadian soil was Erasmus Stourton
Erasmus Stourton
Erasmus Stourton was a clergyman and early settler to the Colony of Avalon, Newfoundland in 1627...
who arrived at the "Sea Forest Plantation" at Ferryland
Ferryland
Ferryland is a town in Newfoundland and Labrador on the Avalon Peninsula. According to the 2006 Statistics Canada census, its population is 529. Addresses in Ferryland use the alphanumerically lowest postal codes in Canada, starting with A0A....
, Newfoundland in 1612 under the patronage of Lords Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
and Baltimore
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore
Sir George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, 8th Proprietary Governor of Newfoundland was an English politician and colonizer. He achieved domestic political success as a Member of Parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I...
. Stourton was of the Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
party and remained in Ferryland until returning to England in 1628.
Members of the Church of England established the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in 1698, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) in 1701, and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1799. These and other organizations directly financed and sent missionaries to establish the English Church in Canada and to convert Canada's First Nations
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
people. Direct aid of this sort lasted up to the 1940s.
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
St. John's is the capital and largest city in Newfoundland and Labrador, and is the oldest English-founded city in North America. It is located on the eastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland. With a population of 192,326 as of July 1, 2010, the St...
and was supported (but not financially) by the SPCK in 1698. In 1701, the SPG took over the patronage of St John's. Jackson continued to receive little actual support and was replaced by the Reverend Jacob Rice in 1709. Rice wrote a letter to the Bishop of London
Bishop of London
The Bishop of London is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of London in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers 458 km² of 17 boroughs of Greater London north of the River Thames and a small part of the County of Surrey...
detailing his efforts to repair the church which had been "most unchristianly defaced" and asking for help in acquiring communion vessels, a pulpit cloth, surplices and glass for the windows. The garrison chapel was replaced in 1720 and in 1759. The Cathedral of St John the Baptist
Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (St. John's)
The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist is located in the city of St. John's, Newfoundland. This parish in the Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador was founded in 1699 in response to a petition drafted by the Anglican townsfolk of St. John's and sent to the Bishop of London, the Rt. Rev....
in St John's, Newfoundland, is the oldest Anglican parish in Canada, founded in 1699 in response to a petition drafted by the Anglican townsfolk of St John's and sent to the Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Henry Compton.
As Newfoundland did not join the Confederation until 1949, continuous Anglican services in Canada used to be dated from 1710 when a New England army from Boston with assistance of the Royal Navy captured for the fourth time Port Royal
Habitation at Port-Royal
The Habitation at Port-Royal was the first successful French settlement of New France in North America, and is presently known as Port-Royal National Historic Site, a National Historic Site located on the northern side of the Annapolis Basin, Nova Scotia, Canada...
in Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
and renamed it Annapolis Royal. When Annapolis was captured, one of the chaplains, the Reverend John Harrison, held a service of thanksgiving with the Reverend Samuel Hesker, the chaplain of the Marines, preaching the sermon. When the war ended in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht
Treaty of Utrecht
The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed by the belligerents in the War of Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht in March and April 1713...
, Harrison continued to act as Chaplain to the Garrison at Annapolis Royal.
St. Paul's Church (Halifax)
St. Paul's Church is an evangelical Anglican church in downtown Halifax Nova Scotia within the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island of the Anglican Church of Canada. It is located at the south end of the Grand Parade, an open square in downtown Halifax with Halifax City Hall at the...
in Halifax, Nova Scotia, whose foundation stone - the church is a wood structure - was laid by the Nova Scotia governor on 13 June 1750. St. Paul's opened for services on 2 September 1750 with an SPG clergyman, the Reverend William Tutty, preaching.. St Paul's became the first Anglican cathedral in all of North America when Charles Inglis was appointed bishop in 1787. It has been a parish church since 1864 when another church was made the cathedral of the Nova Scotian diocese.
American revolution
The American RevolutionAmerican Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
split the Church of England in North America. One of many consequences of the revolution was establishment of a North American episcopacy. The first Anglican bishop in North America was Samuel Seabury who was consecrated by the Scottish Episcopal Church
Scottish Episcopal Church
The Scottish Episcopal Church is a Christian church in Scotland, consisting of seven dioceses. Since the 17th century, it has had an identity distinct from the presbyterian Church of Scotland....
on 14 November 1784 because the Church of England had no legal mechanism to appoint a bishop outside of England. The Anglican Church of Canada's Book of Alternative Services commemorates Seabury on 14 November.
Anglicans were numerous among the United Empire Loyalists who fled to Canada after the American Revolution and the Anglican Church was a dominant feature of the compact government
Compact government
Compact governments or compacts were the conservative colonial cliquesthat ruled colonies, particularly in British North America prior to the granting of responsible government. They were usually Tory in orientation and were representative of the local elite. The best known one was the Family...
s that presided over the colonies in British North America.
One of the former Americans was Charles Inglis who was rector of Trinity Church
Trinity Church, New York
Trinity Church at 79 Broadway, Lower Manhattan, is a historic, active parish church in the Episcopal Diocese of New York...
in New York when George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
was in the congregation. He became the first bishop of the diocese of Nova Scotia
Anglican Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island
The Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island is a diocese of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada of the Anglican Church of Canada. It encompasses the provinces of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and has two cathedrals: All Saints' in Halifax and St. Peter's in Charlottetown...
on 12 August 1787 and the first Church of England bishop of a diocese outside of the United Kingdom and in the British Empire. The Anglican Church of Canada's Prayer Book commemorates Inglis on 12 August.
The historical connections between The Episcopal Church in the U.S. and the Anglican Church of Canada are very close. Seabury and Inglis knew each other. In fact, on March 8 and then on the 21st of 1783, a group of eighteen clergy - most prominent was the Reverend Charles Inglis - met in New York to discuss the future of Nova Scotia, including plans for the appointment of a bishop in Nova Scotia and the college that would in time become the University of King's College
University of King's College
The University of King's College is a post-secondary institution in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. King's is a small liberal arts university offering mainly undergraduate programs....
, Halifax.
To digress for a moment, the connections between the now administratively separated churches continued in many ways. Two illustrations will suffice. In the summer of 1857, Bishop Scott of Oregon visited Victoria and confirmed twenty candidates as the first British Columbian bishop would not be appointed for another two years. From the 1890s to 1902, the Reverend Henry Irving - Father Pat - was licensed in both the Diocese of Kootenay and the Diocese of Spokane
Episcopal Diocese of Spokane
The Episcopal Diocese of Spokane is a diocese of the Episcopal Church in eastern Washington and North Idaho, United States. Its office and cathedral seat are in Spokane, Washington. The current Bishop is the Right Reverend James Waggoner, Jr....
- the two dioceses meet at the border between B.C. and the state of Washington. As Father Pat told his friends, he was:
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
and the American Revolution, many leading Anglicans argued for the Church of England to become the established church in the Canadian colonies. The Constitutional Act of 1791
Constitutional Act of 1791
The Constitutional Act of 1791, formally The Clergy Endowments Act, 1791 , is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain...
was promulgated, and interpreted to mean that the Church was the established Church in the Canadas
Province of Canada
The Province of Canada, United Province of Canada, or the United Canadas was a British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham in the Report on the Affairs of British North America following the Rebellions of...
. The Church of England was established by law in Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
, New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...
and Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population...
. In Lower Canada
Lower Canada
The Province of Lower Canada was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...
, the presence of a Roman Catholic majority made establishment in that province politically unwise. Bishop John Strachan
John Strachan
John Strachan was an influential figure in Upper Canada and the first Anglican Bishop of Toronto.-Early life:Strachan was the youngest of six children born to a quarry worker in Aberdeen, Scotland. He graduated from King's College, Aberdeen in 1797...
of Toronto was a particular champion of the prerogatives of the Church of England.
The secular history of Canada depicts Bishop Strachan as an ally of the landed gentry of the so-called Family Compact
Family Compact
Fully developed after the War of 1812, the Compact lasted until Upper and Lower Canada were united in 1841. In Lower Canada, its equivalent was the Château Clique. The influence of the Family Compact on the government administration at different levels lasted to the 1880s...
of Upper Canada
Upper Canada
The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...
, opposed to the political aspirations of farmers and bourgeoisie for responsible government
Responsible government
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability which is the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy...
. Nonetheless, Strachan played considerable part in promoting education, as founder of Kings College (now the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
) and Trinity College
University of Trinity College
The University of Trinity College, informally referred to as Trin, is a college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1851 by Bishop John Strachan. Trinity was intended by Strachan as a college of strong Anglican alignment, after the University of Toronto severed its ties with the Church of...
. The Clergy reserves, land that had been reserved for use by the Protestant clergy
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
, became a major issue in the mid-19th century. Anglicans argued that the land was meant for their exclusive use, while other Protestant denominations demanded that it be divided among them.
In Upper Canada, leading dissenters such as Methodist minister Egerton Ryerson
Egerton Ryerson
Adolphus Egerton Ryerson was a Methodist minister, educator, politician, and public education advocate in early Ontario, Canada...
— in due course a minister of education in the government of Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
— agitated against establishment. Following the Upper Canada Rebellion
Upper Canada Rebellion
The Upper Canada Rebellion was, along with the Lower Canada Rebellion in Lower Canada, a rebellion against the British colonial government in 1837 and 1838. Collectively they are also known as the Rebellions of 1837.-Issues:...
, the creation of the united Province of Canada
Province of Canada
The Province of Canada, United Province of Canada, or the United Canadas was a British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham in the Report on the Affairs of British North America following the Rebellions of...
, and the implementation of responsible government in the 1840s, the unpopularity of the Anglican-dominated Family Compact
Family Compact
Fully developed after the War of 1812, the Compact lasted until Upper and Lower Canada were united in 1841. In Lower Canada, its equivalent was the Château Clique. The influence of the Family Compact on the government administration at different levels lasted to the 1880s...
made establishment a moot point. The Church was disestablished
Disestablishmentarianism
Disestablishmentarianism today relates to the Church of England in the United Kingdom and related views on its establishment as an established church....
in Nova Scotia in 1850 and Upper Canada in 1854. By the time of Confederation
Canadian Confederation
Canadian Confederation was the process by which the federal Dominion of Canada was formed on July 1, 1867. On that day, three British colonies were formed into four Canadian provinces...
in 1867, the Church of England was disestablished throughout British North America
British North America
British North America is a historical term. It consisted of the colonies and territories of the British Empire in continental North America after the end of the American Revolutionary War and the recognition of American independence in 1783.At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 the British...
.
Autonomy and interdependence
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
: bishops were appointed and priests supplied by the church in England, and funding for the church came from the British Parliament. The first Canadian synod
Synod
A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...
s were established in the 1850s, giving the Canadian church a degree of self-government. As a result of the Privy Council
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is one of the highest courts in the United Kingdom. Established by the Judicial Committee Act 1833 to hear appeals formerly heard by the King in Council The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) is one of the highest courts in the United...
decision of Long v. Gray in 1861, all Anglican churches in colonies of the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
became self-governing. Even so, the first General Synod
General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada
The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is the chief governing and legislative body of the Anglican Church of Canada , the sole Canadian representative of the Anglican Communion...
for all of Canada was not held until 1893. That first synod made the Solemn Declaration 1893, which describes how the Church of England in Canada is related to "the Church of England throughout the world" and "the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church". Robert Machray
Robert Machray
Robert Machray was a Church of England clergyman and missionary and the first Primate of the Church of England in Canada.-Life:...
was chosen as the Canadian church's first Primate
Primate (religion)
Primate is a title or rank bestowed on some bishops in certain Christian churches. Depending on the particular tradition, it can denote either jurisdictional authority or ceremonial precedence ....
.
Expansion
As the new Canadian nation expanded after confederationCanadian Confederation
Canadian Confederation was the process by which the federal Dominion of Canada was formed on July 1, 1867. On that day, three British colonies were formed into four Canadian provinces...
in 1867, so too did the Anglican Church. After the establishment of the first ecclesiastical province
Ecclesiastical Province
An ecclesiastical province is a large jurisdiction of religious government, so named by analogy with a secular province, existing in certain hierarchical Christian churches, especially in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches and in the Anglican Communion...
— that of Canada
Ecclesiastical Province of Canada
The Ecclesiastical Province of Canada was founded in 1860 and is one of four ecclesiastical provinces in the Anglican Church of Canada. Despite its name, the province covers only the former territory of Lower Canada , the Maritimes, and Newfoundland and Labrador...
in 1860 — others followed. The first was the Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert's Land
Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert's Land
The Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert's Land was founded in 1875 and is one of four ecclesiastical provinces in the Anglican Church of Canada. The territory covered by the province is roughly coterminous with the western portion of the former Hudson's Bay Company concession of Rupert's Land, as...
, created in 1875 to encompass Anglican dioceses outside what were then the boundaries of Canada: present-day Northern Ontario and Northern Quebec, the western provinces, and the Territories. In the forty years between self-government in 1861 and 1900, sixteen of the presently existing dioceses were created, as numbers blossomed with accelerating immigration from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The far-flung nature of settlement in the North-West together with a shortage of resources to pay stipendiary clergy early led to a significant reliance on women lay workers, deemed "deaconesses," for missionary outreach, a phenomenon which made the eventual ordination of women to the priesthood in 1976 relatively uncontroversial.
Canadian residential school system
-History:Founded in the 19th century, the Canadian Indian residential school system was intended to assimilate the children of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada into European-Canadian society...
for the indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
of the First Nations
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
— a decision which would come back to haunt it much later. Such schools removed children from their home communities in an attempt to, among other things, assimilate them into the dominant European culture and language: the merits and demerits of that system in a broad sense, such as they were, have latterly been entirely overwhelmed by the issue of the wholly reprehensible abuse of some of its child wards by sexually disordered mission personnel. At the same time, Anglican missionaries were involved in advocating for First Nations rights and land claims on behalf of those people to whom they were ministering (for example, the Nisga'a
Nisga'a
The Nisga’a , often formerly spelled Nishga and spelled in the Nisga’a language as Nisga’a, are an Indigenous nation or First Nation in Canada. They live in the Nass River valley of northwestern British Columbia. Their name comes from a combination of two Nisga’a words: Nisk’-"top lip" and...
of northern British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
). One of the earliest First Nations students to be educated at Red River
Red River Colony
The Red River Colony was a colonization project set up by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk in 1811 on of land granted to him by the Hudson's Bay Company under what is referred to as the Selkirk Concession. The colony along the Red River of the North was never very successful...
in the 1830s was Henry Budd. He was ordained in 1850 and was the first First Nations priest and became the missionary at Fort Cumberland on the Saskatchewan River and then to the post of The Pas. The Anglican Church of Canada's Prayer Book commemorates Henry Budd on 2 April.
Despite this growth in both the size and role of the church, progress was intermittently undermined by internal conflict over churchmanship
Churchmanship
Within Anglicanism the term churchmanship is sometimes used to refer to distinct understandings of church doctrine and liturgical practice by members of the Church of England and other churches of the Anglican communion...
. This was manifested in the creation of competing theological schools (Trinity versus Wycliffe Colleges in the University of Toronto, for example), a refusal by bishops of one ecclesiastical party to ordain those of the other, and — in the most extreme cases — schism. This latter phenomenon was famously and acrimoniously borne out in the high profile defection of Edward Cridge, the Dean of the Diocese of [British] Columbia in Victoria, B.C., together with much of his cathedral congregation, to the Reformed Episcopal Church
Reformed Episcopal Church
The Reformed Episcopal Church is an Anglican church in the United States and Canada and a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America...
in 1874, although the movement was ultimately confined to that one congregation in a then-remote town together with a second parish in New Westminster, the then-capital of the originally separate mainland colony of British Columbia.
A Church of England conference held in Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
in August 1890 established the union of all synods.
Twentieth century
Expansion evolved into a general complacency as the 20th century progressed. During the early part of this period, the ACC reinforced its traditional role as the establishment church, although influences from the autochthonous Protestant social gospelSocial Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada...
movement, and the Christian socialism
Christian socialism
Christian socialism generally refers to those on the Christian left whose politics are both Christian and socialist and who see these two philosophies as being interrelated. This category can include Liberation theology and the doctrine of the social gospel...
of elements in the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
increasingly were felt. This influence would eventually result in the creation of what would come to be known as the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund, in 1958.
By the middle of the century, pressure to reform the structures of the church were being felt. The name of the church was changed in 1955 from "The Church of England in Canada" to the "Anglican Church of Canada," and a major revision of the Book of Common Prayer
Book of Common Prayer
The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
was undertaken in 1962 — the first in over forty years. In 1962, the United Church of Canada
United Church of Canada
The United Church of Canada is a Protestant Christian denomination in Canada. It is the largest Protestant church and, after the Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest Christian church in Canada...
and Anglican Church of Canada
Anglican Church of Canada
The Anglican Church of Canada is the Province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French name is l'Église Anglicane du Canada. The ACC is the third largest church in Canada after the Roman Catholic Church and the United Church of Canada, consisting of 800,000 registered members...
jointly published Growth in Understanding, a study guide on union, and on June 1, 1965 the Principles of Union between the United Church and the Anglican Church. Despite these changes, the church was still perceived as complacent and disengaged — a view emphasized by the title of Pierre Berton
Pierre Berton
Pierre Francis de Marigny Berton, was a noted Canadian author of non-fiction, especially Canadiana and Canadian history, and was a well-known television personality and journalist....
's best-selling commissioned analysis of the denomination, The Comfortable Pew, published in 1965.
Change became more rapid towards the close of the 1960s, as mainline churches including the Anglicans began to see the first wave of evaporation from the pews. On August 23, 1967, the Anglican Church of Canada agreed to permit the remarriage of divorced persons in their churches. Ecumenical relationships were intensified, with a view to full communion
Full communion
In Christian ecclesiology, full communion is a relationship between church organizations or groups that mutually recognize their sharing the essential doctrines....
. While negotiations with the largest Canadian Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada
United Church of Canada
The United Church of Canada is a Protestant Christian denomination in Canada. It is the largest Protestant church and, after the Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest Christian church in Canada...
, faltered in the early 1970s, the Anglican Church did achieve full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is Canada's largest Lutheran denomination, with 152,788 baptized members in 624 congregations, with the second largest, the Lutheran Church–Canada, having 72,116 baptized members...
as the century drew to a close. New liturgical resources were introduced, which would culminate in the publication of the Book of Alternative Services
Book of Alternative Services
The Book of Alternative Services is the contemporary, inclusive-language liturgical book used alongside the Book of Common Prayer in most parishes of the Anglican Church of Canada...
in 1985. Agitation for the ordination of women led to the vote on June 18, 1975 by the Anglican Church of Canada in favour of ordination as priests, and - eventually - bishops. And social and cultural change led to the church's decision to marry divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
d couples, endorse certain forms of contraception
Contraception
Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
, and moves towards greater inclusion of gay and lesbian
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
people in the life of the church.
Introduction
Anglican Christians around the world are held together by common forms of worship (the Book of Common PrayerBook of Common Prayer
The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
and derivatives) which embody its doctrine, other Reformation formularies (the Ordinal, the Thirty-Nine Articles
Thirty-Nine Articles
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion are the historically defining statements of doctrines of the Anglican church with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation. First established in 1563, the articles served to define the doctrine of the nascent Church of England as it related to...
, and the First and Second Book of Homilies
Book of Homilies
The Books of Homilies are two books of thirty-three sermons developing the reformed doctrines of the Church of England in greater depth and detail than in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion...
) and a shared theological tradition. Other instruments of unity in the Anglican Communion are, locally, its bishops and, internationally, the Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...
, and, more recently, the Lambeth Conferences
Lambeth Conferences
The Lambeth Conferences are decennial assemblies of bishops of the Anglican Communion convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The first such conference took place in 1867....
, the Anglican Communion Primates' Meeting
Anglican Communion Primates' Meeting
The Anglican Communion Primates' Meetings are regular meetings of the Anglican Primates, i.e. the chief archbishops or bishops of each ecclesiastical province of the Anglican Communion. There are currently 38 Primates of the Anglican Communion. The Primates come together from the geographic...
, and the biannual Anglican Consultative Council
Anglican Consultative Council
The Anglican Consultative Council or ACC is one of the four "Instruments of Communion" of the Anglican Communion. It was created by a resolution of the 1968 Lambeth Conference...
. These last four instruments of unity have moral but not legislative authority over individual Provinces.
In Canada, Anglican bishops have divested some of their authority to three bodies - the General Synod, the Provincial Synod (there are 4 in Canada) and the Diocesan Synod (there are 29).
The national church in Canada is structured on the typical Anglican model of a presiding archbishop (the Primate
Primate (religion)
Primate is a title or rank bestowed on some bishops in certain Christian churches. Depending on the particular tradition, it can denote either jurisdictional authority or ceremonial precedence ....
) and Synod
Synod
A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...
.
Recently the church has considered rationalizing its increasingly top-heavy episcopal structure as its membership wanes, which could mean a substantial reduction in the number of dioceses, bishops and cathedrals.
Houses of Bishops
Diocesan bishops promise "to hold and maintain the Doctrine, Sacraments and discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded in his holy Word, and as the Anglican Church of Canada hath received and set forth the same." They work collegially as a House of Bishops. There is a national House of Bishops, which meets regularly throughout the year, as well as provincial houses of bishops. These are chaired, respectively, by the Primate and the individual metropolitans.Primate
The Primate of the ACC — originally the "Primate of All Canada" in echo of the titles of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in England and to distinguish the national church from the Ecclesiastical Province of CanadaEcclesiastical Province of Canada
The Ecclesiastical Province of Canada was founded in 1860 and is one of four ecclesiastical provinces in the Anglican Church of Canada. Despite its name, the province covers only the former territory of Lower Canada , the Maritimes, and Newfoundland and Labrador...
(the former territory of Lower Canada, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland) — is elected by General Synod from among all the bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada. Primates hold the ex officio rank of archbishop; in 1931 the General Synod approved a recommendation that a fixed primatial See
Episcopal See
An episcopal see is, in the original sense, the official seat of a bishop. This seat, which is also referred to as the bishop's cathedra, is placed in the bishop's principal church, which is therefore called the bishop's cathedral...
(as of the Archbishop of Canterbury) be established and in 1955 it was recommended that "a small See [be created] in the vicinity of Ottawa to which the Dioceses of The Arctic, Moosonee, Keewatin and Yukon would be attached, forming a fifth Province." However, General Synod rejected the proposal in 1959 and in 1969 "the Canon on the Primacy was amended to require the Primate to maintain an office at the national headquarters of the Church, with a pastoral relationship to the whole Church, but no fixed Primatial See" as with Presiding Bishops of the Episcopal Church of the USA and unlike Primates of England, Australia and elsewhere. In consequence, Primates of the Anglican Church of Canada are not diocesan bishops and generally do not carry out ordinary episcopal functions; they originally held office for life but in recent years they have retired by the age of 70.
In recent decades Primates of the ACC have intermittently held a considerable place in public life. In particular, Archbishop Ted Scott
Ted Scott
Edward "Ted" Scott, CC was a Canadian Anglican bishop.Scott was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1919 and grew up in Vancouver, where his father was a rector. He attended Anglican Theological College and was ordained in 1942...
, who was a President of the World Council of Churches
World Council of Churches
The World Council of Churches is a worldwide fellowship of 349 global, regional and sub-regional, national and local churches seeking unity, a common witness and Christian service. It is a Christian ecumenical organization that is based in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland...
, was a member of a Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
Eminent Persons committee in respect of the devolution of power from the white-only government of South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
to a fully democratic government. Scott's successor, Michael Peers
Michael Peers
Michael Geoffrey Peers was Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada from 1986 to 2004.Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Peers completed an undergraduate degree in languages at the University of British Columbia in 1956 and a diploma in translation at the University of Heidelberg in 1957...
, continued the close association with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and was thrust into a high profile in Canadian national life when he insisted that the ACC should shoulder its responsibilities for the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools
Canadian residential school system
-History:Founded in the 19th century, the Canadian Indian residential school system was intended to assimilate the children of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada into European-Canadian society...
, and when he protested at what he described as the downplaying of Christian witness in the official commemoration of events of national importance.
There have been twelve primates in the history of the church. The current Primate is the Most Rev. Fred Hiltz
Fred Hiltz
Frederick James "Fred" Hiltz is the current Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.Hiltz was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia where he was also raised. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree at Dalhousie University in 1975 and obtained his Master of Divinity degree at the Atlantic School of...
, formerly Bishop of the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, elected on the fifth ballot at the June, 2007 General Synod.
General Synod
The chief synodical governing body of the church is the General Synod of the Anglican Church of CanadaGeneral Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada
The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is the chief governing and legislative body of the Anglican Church of Canada , the sole Canadian representative of the Anglican Communion...
. The Declaration of Principles in the General Synod Handbook contains: the Solemn Declaration 1893; the Basis of Constitution; and the Fundamental Principles previously adopted by the Synod in 1893 and these constitute the foundation of the Synod structure. The General Synod meets triennially and consists of lay people, clergy, and bishops from each of the 29 diocese
Diocese
A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...
s. In-between General Synods, the day-to-day affairs of the ACC are administered by a group elected by General Synod, called the Council of General Synod (COGS), which consults with and directs national staff working at the church's headquarters in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
.
Each diocese holds annual diocesan synod
Synod
A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...
s from which lay and clergy delegates are elected as representatives to General Synod
General Synod
-Church of England:In the Church of England, the General Synod, which was established in 1970 , is the legislative body of the Church.-Episcopal Church of the United States:...
, the national deliberative body, which meets triennially. These delegates join the Primate and the bishops of the church to form three Orders - lay, clergy, and bishops. The most recent general synod was in 2007 and met in Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
.
General Synod has authority to define "the doctrines of the Church in harmony with the Solemn Declaration 1893", and over matters of discipline, and canon law
Canon law
Canon law is the body of laws & regulations made or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Catholic Church , the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Anglican Communion of...
of the national church, in addition to more prosaic matters of administration and policy. At each diocesan synod, the three houses elect representatives to sit on the Council of General Synod, which — with the Primate — acts as the governing authority of the national church in-between synods.
Provinces, dioceses and parishes
The ACC is divided into four ecclesiastical provinceEcclesiastical Province
An ecclesiastical province is a large jurisdiction of religious government, so named by analogy with a secular province, existing in certain hierarchical Christian churches, especially in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches and in the Anglican Communion...
s - British Columbia and the Yukon
Ecclesiastical Province of British Columbia and the Yukon
The Ecclesiastical Province of British Columbia and the Yukon is one of four ecclesiastical provinces in the Anglican Church of Canada. It was founded in 1914 as the Ecclesiastical Province of British Columbia, but changed its name in 1943 when the Diocese of Yukon was incorporated from the...
, Canada
Ecclesiastical Province of Canada
The Ecclesiastical Province of Canada was founded in 1860 and is one of four ecclesiastical provinces in the Anglican Church of Canada. Despite its name, the province covers only the former territory of Lower Canada , the Maritimes, and Newfoundland and Labrador...
(encompassing the Atlantic provinces and Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
), Ontario
Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario
The Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario is one of the Anglican Church of Canada's four ecclesiastical provinces. It was established in 1912 out of six dioceses of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada located in the civil Province of Ontario, and the Diocese of Moosonee from the Ecclesiastical...
, and Rupert's Land
Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert's Land
The Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert's Land was founded in 1875 and is one of four ecclesiastical provinces in the Anglican Church of Canada. The territory covered by the province is roughly coterminous with the western portion of the former Hudson's Bay Company concession of Rupert's Land, as...
(encompassing the prairie provinces, Nunavut
Nunavut
Nunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993...
, the Northwest Territories
Northwest Territories
The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...
, and portions of Ontario). Within the provinces are 29 diocese
Diocese
A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...
s and one grouping of churches in British Columbia that functions equivalently to a diocese.
Each province
Ecclesiastical Province
An ecclesiastical province is a large jurisdiction of religious government, so named by analogy with a secular province, existing in certain hierarchical Christian churches, especially in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches and in the Anglican Communion...
has its own archbishop
Archbishop
An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...
, known as the Metropolitan
Metropolitan bishop
In Christian churches with episcopal polity, the rank of metropolitan bishop, or simply metropolitan, pertains to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis; that is, the chief city of a historical Roman province, ecclesiastical province, or regional capital.Before the establishment of...
, and each diocese has a bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
, although there are no metropolitical dioceses (or archdioceses) as such; a metropolitan is styled "Archbishop of [his or her own diocese], and Metropolitan of [the ecclesiastical province]."
As with other churches in the Anglican tradition, each diocese is divided up into geographical regions called parishes, where certain authority resides in the rector or priest-in-charge (as laid out in the induction service, the ordinal, and the cleric's licence) and in the parish council (or vestry) as defined in diocesan canons. The legal relationship between a parish and its diocese and between a parish and its synod varies around the country and even within dioceses depending in part on when each was established.
Both dioceses and provinces hold synods, usually annually, consisting of the active diocesan clergy and lay delegates elected by parish churches. Diocesan synods elect lay and clergy delegates to provincial synod. On the diocesan level, there are effectively two houses instead of three — clergy and laity — with the diocesan bishop required to give assent to motions passed by synod.
Ecumenical relations
The ACC is a member of the World Council of ChurchesWorld Council of Churches
The World Council of Churches is a worldwide fellowship of 349 global, regional and sub-regional, national and local churches seeking unity, a common witness and Christian service. It is a Christian ecumenical organization that is based in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland...
and Archbishop Ted Scott
Ted Scott
Edward "Ted" Scott, CC was a Canadian Anglican bishop.Scott was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1919 and grew up in Vancouver, where his father was a rector. He attended Anglican Theological College and was ordained in 1942...
was a president of that body; the ACC has been an active participant in the Canadian Council of Churches
Canadian Council of Churches
The was founded on September 27, 1944 at Yorkminister Baptist Church in Toronto Ontario Canada. The Canadian Council of Churches provides an agency for consultation, planning and common action. It was founded to co-ordinate the growing number of Canadian co-operative ventures in social services,...
from its establishment immediately after the Second World War. Through the 1960s the ACC was involved in talks with the United Church of Canada
United Church of Canada
The United Church of Canada is a Protestant Christian denomination in Canada. It is the largest Protestant church and, after the Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest Christian church in Canada...
and the Disciples of Christ with a view to institutional union, in the course of which a comprehensive Plan of Union was formulated and a joint Anglican-United Church hymnal produced in 1971. Ultimately such talks foundered when the Houses of Laity and Clergy voted in favour of union but the House of Bishops vetoed it, largely due to concerns over the maintenance of the Apostolic Succession
Apostolic Succession
Apostolic succession is a doctrine, held by some Christian denominations, which asserts that the chosen successors of the Twelve Apostles, from the first century to the present day, have inherited the spiritual, ecclesiastical and sacramental authority, power, and responsibility that were...
of the episcopacy.
More recently, in 2001, the ACC established full communion
Full communion
In Christian ecclesiology, full communion is a relationship between church organizations or groups that mutually recognize their sharing the essential doctrines....
with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is Canada's largest Lutheran denomination, with 152,788 baptized members in 624 congregations, with the second largest, the Lutheran Church–Canada, having 72,116 baptized members...
(ELCIC). Contrary to the practice in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox communions, all baptized Christians are welcome to receive Holy Communion in Canadian Anglican churches, in accordance with the resolution in favour of open communion
Open communion
Open communion is the practice of Christian churches that allow individuals other than members of that church to receive Holy Communion...
at the 1968 Lambeth Conference.
Through the Anglican Communion, the ACC is also in full communion with the churches of the Old Catholic Utrecht Union
Utrecht Union
The Union of Utrecht is a federation of Old Catholic Churches, not in communion with Rome, that seceded from the Roman Catholic Church over the issue of Papal infallibility. The Declaration of Utrecht solidified this movement in 1889...
(represented by St. John's Cathedral, Toronto
St. John's Cathedral, Toronto
St. John's Cathedral Polish Catholic Church in the Parkdale area of Toronto, Ontario is the seat of the Polish National Catholic Church's diocese in Canada....
), the Mar Thoma Church
Mar Thoma Church
The Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church also known as the Mar Thoma Church is a Christian denomination based in the state of Kerala in southwestern India. It has an entirely different identity when compared with other Churches in India. Most Christian churches around the world are divided into...
, and the Philippine Independent Church
Philippine Independent Church
The Philippine Independent Church, The Philippine Independent Church, The Philippine Independent Church, (officially the or the IFI, also known as the Philippine Independent Catholic Church or in Ilocano: Siwawayawaya nga Simbaan ti Filipinas (in in Kinaray-a/Hiligaynon: Simbahan Hilway nga...
. Unlike the Anglican Churches of the British Isles, it is not a signatory to the Porvoo Agreement which established full communion between those bodies and a number of European Lutheran churches.
Liturgy and service books
- See also Book of Common Prayer
In 1918 and 1962 the ACC produced successive authoritative Canadian Prayer Books, substantially based on the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer
Book of Common Prayer
The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
(BCP); both were conservative revisions consisting largely of minor editorial emendations of archaic diction. In 1985 the Book of Alternative Services
Book of Alternative Services
The Book of Alternative Services is the contemporary, inclusive-language liturgical book used alongside the Book of Common Prayer in most parishes of the Anglican Church of Canada...
(BAS) was issued, officially not designated to supersede but to be used alongside the 1962 Prayer Book. It is a more thoroughgoing modernizing of Canadian Anglican liturgies, containing considerable borrowings from Lutheran, Church of England, American Episcopal and liberal Roman Catholic service books; it was received with general enthusiasm and in practice has largely supplanted the Book of Common Prayer, although the BCP remains the official Liturgy of the Church in Canada. A French translation, Le Recueil des Prières de la Communauté Chrétienne, was published in 1967. The preference for the BAS among many parishes and clergy has been countered by the founding of the Prayer Book Society of Canada
Prayer Book Society of Canada
The Prayer Book Society of Canada or PBS is an organization within the Anglican Church of Canada which "promotes the understanding and use of the Book of Common Prayer as a spiritual system of nurture for life in Christ"...
, which seeks "to promote the understanding and use of the BCP as a spiritual system of nurture for life in Christ". The tension between adherents of the BCP and advocates of the BAS has contributed to a sense of disaffection within the Church. There have been increasing calls for revision of the Book of Alternative Services. Those who use the BAS have cited various shortcomings as it ages and newer liturgies are produced elsewhere in the Communion. At the 2007 General Synod, a resolution was passed which will begin the process of revising the modern language liturgies.
Hymnody is an important aspect of worship in Anglicanism, and the ACC is no different. There is no one hymnal required to be used, although the ACC has produced four successive authorized versions since 1908. The most recent, Common Praise, was published in 1998. Anglican plainsong
Plainsong
Plainsong is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Catholic Church. Though the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church did not split until long after the origin of plainchant, Byzantine chants are generally not classified as plainsong.Plainsong is monophonic, consisting of a...
is represented in the new hymnal, as well as in the older Canadian Psalter, published in 1963. Notable Canadian Anglican hymnists include Derek Holman
Derek Holman
Derek Holman, CM is a choral conductor, organist, and composer.Holman attended the Royal Academy of Music from 1948 to 1952 and studied with Sir William McKie, Eric Thiman, and York Bowen...
, Gordon Light, Herbert O'Driscoll, and Healey Willan
Healey Willan
Healey Willan, was an Anglo-Canadian organist and composer. He composed more than 800 works including operas, symphonies, chamber music, a concerto, and pieces for band, orchestra, organ, and piano...
. For a time, beginning in the early 1970s, many Anglican congregations experimented with The Hymn Book produced jointly with the United Church of Canada
United Church of Canada
The United Church of Canada is a Protestant Christian denomination in Canada. It is the largest Protestant church and, after the Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest Christian church in Canada...
under the direction of Canadian composer F. R. C. Clarke
F. R. C. Clarke
Frederick Robert Charles Clarke, known largely by his initials F. R. C. Clarke was a Canadian musician and composer who spent most of his musical career in Kingston, Ontario, Canada....
, but both churches have since abandoned the common hymnal.
Like most churches of the Anglican Communion, the ACC was beset by intense conflict over the ritualism controversies of the latter 19th century, leading in some extreme cases to schism. Throughout much of the 20th century, parishes - and, to a certain extent, dioceses or regions - were more or less divided between high church
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...
(Anglo-Catholic), low church
Low church
Low church is a term of distinction in the Church of England or other Anglican churches initially designed to be pejorative. During the series of doctrinal and ecclesiastic challenges to the established church in the 16th and 17th centuries, commentators and others began to refer to those groups...
(evangelical), and broad church
Broad church
Broad church is a term referring to latitudinarian churchmanship in the Church of England, in particular, and Anglicanism, in general. From this, the term is often used to refer to secular political organisations, meaning that they encompass a broad range of opinion.-Usage:After the terms high...
(middle-of-the-road). Many of these designations have become muted with time, as the passions which fired the debate have cooled and most parishes have found a happy medium or accommodation.
Social issues and theological division
As is the case in churches directly influenced by Anglican ethos and theology, the ACC tends to reflect the dominant social and cultural strains of the nation in which it finds itself. For most of its history, the ACC embodied the conservative, colonial outlook of its mostly British-descended parishioners and of English Canada as a whole. In the post-World War II period, as the character of Canada changed, so too did the attitudes of people in the pews, and by extension, the church.Ordination of women and remarriage of divorced persons
In recent years the ACC has been a leading progressive force within the Anglican Communion. In the 1970s the then primate, Ted ScottTed Scott
Edward "Ted" Scott, CC was a Canadian Anglican bishop.Scott was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1919 and grew up in Vancouver, where his father was a rector. He attended Anglican Theological College and was ordained in 1942...
, argued at the Lambeth Conference in favour of women's ordination
Ordination of women
Ordination in general religious usage is the process by which a person is consecrated . The ordination of women is a regular practice among some major religious groups, as it was of several religions of antiquity...
. The ACC ordained its first female priest in 1976 and its first female bishop in 1993. Many parishes, particularly in the west and even more particularly on aboriginal reserves, were already served by women deacons and allowing them to be ordained priests regularized their situation and permitted a regular sacramental ministry to be available in the parishes they served. Nonetheless, this change — in concert with such moves as allowing the remarriage of divorced persons — caused strains among more conservative parishes, both Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical. In the early 1970s some members of the ACC left to join breakaway Anglican groups such as the small Anglican Catholic Church of Canada
Anglican Catholic Church of Canada
The Anglican Catholic Church of Canada is an Anglican church that was founded in the 1970s by conservative Anglicans.-Affiliation:With 30 congregations in Canada, the ACCC is the third-largest of the Anglican churches in Canada, after the ACC and the Anglican Church in North America.The Anglican...
.
Life issues
The ACC takes a moderate pro-lifePro-life
Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
stance on abortion. The official policy is that "abortion is always the taking of a human life and, in our view, should never be done except for serious therapeutic reasons." In 1989, the ACC stated that "In the light of the Government’s announcement of a new Abortion Bill, the Anglican Church reaffirms its position that both the rights and needs of women, and the rights and needs of the unborn, require protection." The ACC also opposes firmly euthanasia and assisted suicide. They also condemn the death penalty.
Inclusion of gays and lesbians
More recently, in 2002, the Diocese of New Westminster (located in the south-west cornerLower Mainland
The Lower Mainland is a name commonly applied to the region surrounding and including Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. As of 2007, 2,524,113 people live in the region; sixteen of the province's thirty most populous municipalities are located there.While the term Lower Mainland has been...
of British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
) voted to permit the blessing of same-sex unions by parishes requesting authorization to do so.
Indian residential schools
During the 19th century the federal Crown delegated the operation of Indian residential schools to the ACC and Roman Catholic religious orders (with some minimal involvement by the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches of Canada as well). In the 1980s numerous tort claimsTort
A tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a wrong that involves a breach of a civil duty owed to someone else. It is differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to society in general...
were brought by former students of such schools against both the Crown and church organizations in respect of abuse by sexually disordered church personnel in such institutions and to a lesser extent in respect of a perception that such schools had been insensitive to issues of preservation of aboriginal culture and identity.
The claims were ultimately comprehensively settled but the damage to the morale of the ACC has yet to be entirely resolved: the Diocese of Cariboo was obliged to declare bankruptcy and was liquidated — its current manifestation is as "the Anglican parishes of the central interior", with episcopal oversight by an assistant bishop to the metropolitan Archbishop of the Province of British Columbia and the Yukon. (Its now-unofficial cathedral of St Paul in Kamloops continues to be deemed a cathedral, its rector being styled "very reverend," as a dean.
). The Diocese of Qu'Appelle and the General Synod of the ACC were in considerable danger of the same fate until settlement of the claims was reached on a national basis. Archbishop Michael Peers
Michael Peers
Michael Geoffrey Peers was Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada from 1986 to 2004.Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Peers completed an undergraduate degree in languages at the University of British Columbia in 1956 and a diploma in translation at the University of Heidelberg in 1957...
took a major role on behalf of the ACC with respect to reaching a settlement with the federal Crown, which was the defendant of the first instance and which counter-claimed against the ACC and Roman Catholic religious orders. He offered the ACC's apology to aboriginal people and delayed his retirement until 2004 when his successor could come to the primacy with the issue also retired.
In January 2007 the ACC announced the appointment of the Right Reverend Mark MacDonald, an aboriginal American with principal episcopal responsibilities in Alaska, as the National Indigenous Bishop with pastoral oversight over all indigenous members of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Cathedrals
The oldest Anglican cathedral in Canada and North America is St. Paul's Church in Halifax which was made Canada's first cathedral when Charles Inglis became the first bishop in 1787. St Paul's remained a cathedral for 78 years until 1864 when St Luke's was named.The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Quebec City is the oldest Anglican cathedral in Canada that continues in that capacity, having been "built from 1800 to 1804; it was constructed according to drawings done by Captain William Hall and Major William Robe, officers of the military engineering corps of the British Army, stationed in Quebec City."
Most Anglican cathedrals in Canada are modest parish churches and it is only the cathedrals of Toronto
Cathedral Church of St. James (Toronto)
Cathedral Church of St. James in Toronto, Canada is the home of the oldest congregation in the city. The parish was established in 1797. The Cathedral was begun in 1850 and completed in 1853, was at the time one of the largest buildings in the city...
, Halifax
All Saints' Cathedral (Halifax)
All Saints Cathedral is the cathedral church of the Anglican Church of Canada in Halifax, Nova Scotia.It is the cathedral for the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island...
, St. John's
Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (St. John's)
The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist is located in the city of St. John's, Newfoundland. This parish in the Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador was founded in 1699 in response to a petition drafted by the Anglican townsfolk of St. John's and sent to the Bishop of London, the Rt. Rev....
, and Victoria which have significant dimensions or imposing designs, though even they are modest by European or even Australian
Anglican Church of Australia
The Anglican Church of Australia is a member church of the Anglican Communion. It was previously officially known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania...
standards. Diocesan services are often held in Roman Catholic or United churches because of the limited seating in most Anglican cathedrals. Christ Church Cathedral, Ottawa
Christ Church Cathedral (Ottawa)
Christ Church Cathedral is the Anglican cathedral in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The church is located in the northwest section of the city's downtown at the western end of Sparks Street at the top of a promontory looking down to the Ottawa River.-Beginnings:...
, while not having any official national status either secularly or ecclesially like that of Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England and forms part of a World Heritage Site....
in England and Washington National Cathedral
Washington National Cathedral
The Washington National Cathedral, officially named the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, is a cathedral of the Episcopal Church located in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. Of neogothic design, it is the sixth-largest cathedral in the world, the second-largest in...
in the USA, is the usual venue for state occasions requiring an ecclesiastical setting, such as state funerals for non-Roman Catholics. Christ's Church Cathedral, Hamilton is the oldest cathedral of Upper Canada
Upper Canada
The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...
, its present building having originally been constructed in 1842, though its curious, evolutionary construction history has left none of the original fabric extant. Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal
Christ Church Cathedral (Montreal)
Christ Church Cathedral is an Anglican Gothic Revival cathedral in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the seat of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal. It is located at 635 Saint Catherine Street West, between Union Avenue and University Street. It is situated on top of the Promenades Cathédrale underground...
is notable for having a shopping mall (Promenades Cathédrale
Promenades Cathédrale
Promenades Cathédrale is a major retail complex on Saint Catherine Street in downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada.Originally named Promenades de la Cathédrale, the complex is located beneath Montreal's Anglican Christ Church Cathedral...
) and Metro
Montreal Metro
The Montreal Metro is a rubber-tired metro system, and the main form of public transportation underground in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada....
station (McGill
McGill (Montreal Metro)
McGill is a station on the Green Line of the Montreal Metro rapid transit system operated by the Société de transport de Montréal . It is located downtown in the borough of Ville-Marie in Montreal, Quebec, Canada . The station opened on October 14, 1966, as part of the original network of the metro...
) underneath it.
Notable parishes
The Church of St. Mary MagdaleneChurch of St. Mary Magdalene (Toronto)
The Church of St. Mary Magdalene is an Anglo-Catholic parish of the Anglican Church of Canada located in Toronto. It is famous for its association with composer Healey Willan and was part of the composite Robertson Davies used to form "St. Aidan's" in his novel The Cunning Man...
in Toronto was the home parish of the organist and composer Healey Willan
Healey Willan
Healey Willan, was an Anglo-Canadian organist and composer. He composed more than 800 works including operas, symphonies, chamber music, a concerto, and pieces for band, orchestra, organ, and piano...
, who composed much of his liturgical music for its choirs. It is the inspiration for the parish of St Aiden in Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...
's novel The Cunning Man
The Cunning Man
The Cunning Man, published by McClelland and Stewart in 1994, is the last novel written by Canadian novelist Robertson Davies.The Cunning Man is the memoir of the life of a doctor, Dr. Jonathan Hullah, living in Toronto. Hullah is a holistic physician — a cunning diagnostician who can often...
. St. Thomas'
St. Thomas Anglican Church
St. Thomas's Anglican Church also known as St. Thomas's, Huron Street is a parish of the Anglican Church of Canada located at 383 Huron Street in Toronto, Ontario. It was one of the earliest Anglo-Catholic congregations in Canada...
, Toronto, was at one time the parish church of the English accompanist Gerald Moore
Gerald Moore
Gerald Moore CBE was an English pianist best known for his career as one of the most in-demand accompanists of his day, accompanying many of the world's most famous musicians...
, who was an assistant organist there. The hymn tune
Hymn tune
A hymn tune is the melody of a musical composition to which a hymn text is sung. Musically speaking, a hymn is generally understood to have four-part harmony, a fast harmonic rhythm , and no refrain or chorus....
"Bellwoods" by James Hopkirk, sung to the hymn "O day of God draw nigh," by the Canadian theologian Robert B.Y. Scott
R. B. Y. Scott
Robert Balgarnie Young Scott was a clergyman of the United Church of Canada and an Old Testament scholar.-Biography:...
, was named for St. Matthias Bellwoods
St. Matthias Bellwoods
St. Matthias, Bellwoods, is a small inclusive Anglo-Catholic parish of the Anglican Church of Canada located in Toronto, Ontario. The cornerstone was laid in 1873 and the building consecrated in 1874...
, in Toronto, where Hopkirk was organist. St Anne's, Toronto, is a notable tourist attraction, being "a scale model of Saint Sophia in Istanbul that was decorated in the 1920s by members of the Group of Seven
Group of Seven (artists)
The Group of Seven, sometimes known as the Algonquin school, were a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920-1933, originally consisting of Franklin Carmichael , Lawren Harris , A. Y. Jackson , Franz Johnston , Arthur Lismer , J. E. H. MacDonald , and Frederick Varley...
and associates." St John's, Elora, is a concert venue of the Elora Music Festival; its choir, also known as the Elora Festival Singers, is the professional core of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir is a Canadian large vocal ensemble based in Toronto.The choir was co-founded in 1894 by Augustus S. Vogt and W. H. Hewlett. The ensemble was originally an extension of the choir of Jarvis St. Baptist Church in Toronto which Vogt directed and Hewlett accompanied. The...
and its CDs are available around the world. St Bartholomew's
St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church (Ottawa)
St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church is an Anglican Church in Ottawa, Canada. The parish was founded in 1866 and the building completed in 1868. Its architect is uncertain but believed to have been Thomas Seaton Scott who designed a number of other prominent Ottawa structures...
, Ottawa, located near to Rideau Hall
Rideau Hall
Rideau Hall is, since 1867, the official residence in Ottawa of both the Canadian monarch and the Governor General of Canada. It stands in Canada's capital on a 0.36 km2 estate at 1 Sussex Drive, with the main building consisting of 170 rooms across 9,500 m2 , and 24 outbuildings around the...
and also known as the Guards Chapel has been the place of worship for Governors General of the Canadas
Province of Canada
The Province of Canada, United Province of Canada, or the United Canadas was a British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham in the Report on the Affairs of British North America following the Rebellions of...
and then Canada since 1866, before the wider confederation of the British North American colonies.
Her Majesty's Royal Chapel of the Mohawks
Mohawk Chapel
Her Majesty's Royal Chapel of the Mohawks, the oldest building in Ontario, is one of six Chapels Royal outside of the United Kingdom, and one of two in Canada, the other being Christ Church Royal Chapel near Deseronto, Ontario. It was elevated to a Chapel Royal by Edward VII in 1904...
in Brantford, Ontario
Brantford, Ontario
Brantford is a city located on the Grand River in Southern Ontario, Canada. While geographically surrounded by the County of Brant, the city is politically independent...
, and Christ Church, Her Majesty's Chapel Royal of the Mohawks
Christ Church Royal Chapel
Christ Church, Her Majesty's Chapel Royal of the Mohawk is located near Deseronto, Ontario, and is one of only six Royal chapels outside of the United Kingdom, and one of two in Canada...
, near Deseronto, Ontario
Deseronto, Ontario
Deseronto is a town in the Canadian province of Ontario, in Hastings County, located on the shore of the Bay of Quinte. The town had a population of 1,824 in the Canada 2006 Census.The town was named for Capt...
are the only two Chapels Royal
Chapel Royal
A Chapel Royal is a body of priests and singers who serve the spiritual needs of their sovereign wherever they are called upon to do so.-Austria:...
in Canada, the latter being elevated to that status by Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
in 2004.
See also
- List of dioceses of the Anglican Church of Canada
- Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Canada)Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Canada)Prior to the revision of the Anglican Church of Canada's Book of Common Prayer in 1962, the national church followed the liturgical calendar of the 1918 Canadian Book of Common Prayer...
- Anglican JournalAnglican JournalThe Anglican Journal is the national newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada. Editorially independent, the Journal publishes news and opinion related to Anglicanism in Canada and abroad. It also contains an extensive arts and culture section, and classified advertising...
, the editorially independent newspaper of the ACC