Kent, David A. (ed.) Household of God: A Parish History of St. Thomas’s Church, Toronto. [Volume One: 1874-1993.] St. Thomas’s Church, 1993. ISBN 0969780206. 546 pp.
Kent, David A., and Kennedy, Patricia A. (eds.) Household of God: A Parish History of St. Thomas’s Church, Toronto. Volume Two: 1984-2024. St. Thomas’s Church, 2024. ISBN 9781928095118. 450pp.
“For years, the atmospheric photograph of the Palm Sunday procession that accompanied John Bentley Mays’s article in The Globe and Mail has adorned a wall in my home. It captures the drama of the procession on that day, in which Willem Hart was thurifer, Neil Hoult and Caleb Reynolds were acolytes, and my daughter Sarah was boat girl. From time to time, folks have queried the context of the photo, wondering what kind of play Sarah was in and what kind of smoke the producer used. ‘The drama of salvation,’ I would always explain, ‘and the sweet smell of home.’”
These reminiscences of the Rev. Canon Susan Haig, a sometime parishioner of St. Thomas, Huron Street, published in the second volume of this history (p. 345), expresses perfectly the character of the parish nicknamed “Smoky Tom’s.” As a newcomer to the parish at the beginning of 2025, I was delighted to discover that I could read an up-to-date history to get to know the people among whom – and the place and practices within which – I am now worshipping. The drama of the liturgy and the smell of the incense I had already encountered in the Epiphany celebrations that were my first experiences of the church as a parishioner. The drama of parish life remains to be discovered, and the nearly 1,000 pages of this history have proven to be a most helpful introduction.
The two volumes are similarly structured, starting with accounts of the incumbent priests, the church building and its furnishings and equipment, the liturgy and music, guilds and groups, education and outreach, and concluding with essays, tributes and myriad reminiscences. The essays included are marvelously thought-provoking, particularly on the liturgy and music, the art and architecture, and the demographics of the parish. The editors, David Kent and Patricia Kennedy for both volumes and with Hugh Anson-Cartwright for the first, must be commended for the evident care and competence with which they brought together the work of so many people. Both volumes are handsomely designed, generously illustrated (in both colour and black and white), and soundly printed and bound as hardcover books.
I enthusiastically recommend this work as a whole to church historians both professional and amateur (because this history is both a rich resource for research and an admirable exemplar for emulation), to fellow Anglicans around the world (because the story of St. Thomas’s is inspiring and encouraging in its demonstration of the providence of God affording the faithfulness of particular people in a particular place following particular—in this case, Prayer Book Catholic—practices), and to my present and future fellow parishioners of St. Thomas’s (because we cannot forge our future without understanding our past). In taking up this reading you will be following the example of the Rev. Nathan Humphrey, who begins his introduction to the second volume by mentioning that “one of the first things I did after accepting the call to be the eighth rector of St. Thomas’s … was to go online and buy a used copy of [the first volume of] Household of God.”
Any reading of this history would be well-accompanied by visits to the church building and participation in at least a high mass, an evensong service, and a feast that includes a procession. As this history describes and explains, St. Thomas’s is a parish centered on incarnational reality, to such an extent that the relationships between the aesthetic reality of the building and its furnishings, the dramatic reality of the liturgical practices performed in that building, and the personal reality of priests and laity all are inextricably woven together, ultimately because of their common central focus on the reality of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This is a church that engages worshippers’ every sense, including taste in the eucharist, smell in the incense, sight in the furnishings and vestments, touch in the pews and kneelers, and certainly not least, hearing in the marvelous music. The evolution of “the St. Thomas’s sound” is described and explained across the two volumes and situated within the evolution of the liturgical tradition of the parish.
The ways in which the Eden Smith building both provides a home to the people and practices of the parish and is itself expressive of the spiritual reality of the parish’s faith shows forth on very nearly every page of the two volumes. The baptistry – described by the art critic John Bentley Mays as “perhaps the most beautiful small room in Toronto” in his 1995 Globe article – allows for the making of poignant connections between the Christian sacraments of initiation, family love, and the horrors of war. The triptych above the altar in the Lady Chapel memorializes the formative influences of Father Roper, who put the parish on the liturgical path along which we continue to travel, and Mother Hannah Coome, the founder of the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine. The carved wooden figures in the reredos behind the high altar illustrate the spiritual ecosystem of the parish, with the figure of St. Thomas (as a carpenter) at the centre surrounded, for example, by St. James (representing the diocesan cathedral and mother church of the parish), St. Augustine of Canterbury (representing the worldwide Anglican communion), St. Cyprian (representing a parish birthed from St. Thomas’s), and St. John (representing the historical relationship of St. Thomas’s with both the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine and the Society of St. John the Evangelist).
The stories of the priests and people of the parish help the reader understand why the Rev. Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan in her reminiscences, included in the first volume, could call St. Thomas’s “a prototype of a parish,” and why the Rev. Canon David Harrison in his reminiscences, included in the second volume, can observe that “St. Thomas’s asks much of its people.” The colour illustrations and written descriptions in both volumes provide a glimpse of the incarnational materiality of the faith practices of this community as expressed in our incense, silver, vestments, altar cloths, and in the faithful service of our Acolytes Guild and Altar Guild.
The vernacular domestic coziness and richly symbolic furnishings of the present building of St. Thomas’s (opened in 1893) represent for me the way in which Christians dwell in the world. I was surprised to learn from this history that the first, wooden building of the parish represents the way in which Christians journey in the world. That building was cut in two, mounted on rollers, and drawn by horses from Bathurst Street to Sussex Avenue in Toronto in 1882, which resulted in amused church folk calling it “the peripatetic church.” The journey was re-enacted in a liturgical procession on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels in 1974, the centenary of the founding of the parish.
The 1893 brick Arts & Crafts church designed by parishioner Eden Smith to replace the original wooden church was itself intended to be replaced in phases over time by a grander stone structure, but the “temporary” church has endured for 130 years.
The wooden “peripatetic church” of 1882 and the brick “temporary church” of 1893 that has turned out to be the permanent (yet ever-changing) home for this community together represent the creative tension inherent in the Christian life. This creative tension is encapsulated in the traditional Benedictine vows of stability, obedience, and conversion of life that the Prayer Book tradition of Anglicanism has claimed as its birthright and charism. In this regard, St. Thomas’s yesterday, today, and tomorrow, is indeed the “prototype of a parish.”
Perhaps we have a worldview problem