Boys’ school seeks to move abandoned Anglican mission

(-article from the Alberta Report magazine – 1975)

Chapel 1976

While rural areas are dotted with hulks of abandoned school houses, churches and farm buildings, the city usually dispenses with such remnants of Alberta’s frontier days with almost indecent haste. Surprisingly, then, one of the Anglican church’s original missions in this area lasted for 65 years in the north end of Edmonton before finally facing condemnation proceedings by the city’s engineering department.  And Edmonton’s Mission Chapel at 11725-93 St. may survive for another 65 years, if St. John’s School of Alberta can raise the $12,500 it needs to move the chapel 40 miles southwest of Edmonton to the school’s property on the North Saskatchewan River.

The chapel was originally built to serve English immigrants who settled just north of Edmonton during the immigration boom which followed the turn of the century. Thinly-populated areas of the new province could not support their own parishes, so the mission was staffed by 17 priests sent in 1910 by the Church of England. With the church here as headquarters, the priests served a wide area. Although all returned to Europe when World war I began, and 10 died in the trenches as army chaplains, the mission continued to serve the district in different capacities as the population and parish increased in size and wealth. Now, many other modern structures have replaced the little chapel, which stands empty on the ground the city wants to make into a “quiet area”. The Anglican diocese is also anxious that the church should quickly disappear since some of its outbuildings have been condemned as firetraps.

But an unlikely rescuer has appeared in the Anglican private boys’ school situated just west of the Genesee Bridge, half way between Warburg and Stony plain. The school since its construction in 1967 has been without a church of its own. Plans to build one of logs fell through only four years ago, when several logistical problems prove insurmountable. Then the school’s small library was remodeled to fill the role. “But it was never intended to be permanent,” says Bud Brooks, science teacher at St. John’s, the man charged with finding money for the moving project. “We’ve always had our eye open for an abandoned church, but all the previous possibilities fell through for one reason or another.” Mr. Brooks heard about the imminent destruction and persuaded the city to hold off until he could raise the money to move it.

A brief to the Devonian Foundation in Calgary proved initially abortive, but one of the foundation’s members referred the brief to an anonymous Calgary philanthropist. He has agreed to pay up to half the $25,000 needed to move and re-establish the church, matching whatever Mr. Brooks and St. John’s can raise by other means. Mr. Brooks hopes to raise the money soon, because the Anglican church has already sold the land to the city. As for the staff and students of St. John’s, Mr. Brooks says they would like it moved as soon as possible, too. But since they have been doing their morning and evening devotions in canoes, around campfires and in mountain passes for years, a few more months in a cramped library isn’t going to cause too much suffering.

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