The unknowns were enticing. There weren’t even proper photographs of the fresco-mural hidden under the layers of paint. When he found it emerging – a pair of angels facing one another from either side of the main stained glass altar window, and then other ornamentations, including an image of the paschal lamb on a side wall – it was thrilling.

Mysteries around the fresco, the restoration of which is a parishioner’s memorial project to a partner who died in 2023, still abound. There seems to be no information in the church archives about the provenance of the original, which was undoubtedly painted soon after St. Simon the Apostle was built in the mid-1880s. The widely respected Eden Smith was one of the architects, and his fondness for the Arts and Crafts style of William Morris lent itself to such decorative touches.

The story of everything getting covered up a century later in the early 1970s is also somewhat murky. Older parishioners who remember the original paintings seem unable to recall what discussions took place prior to the cover-up paint job. Parishioner Margie Huycke says that they just came to church one day “and there it was.” It was done, it seems, at the impetus of a choirmaster who pushed for a number of alterations to the chancel area, believing the acoustics of his music might be improved.

According to Mr. Kwiecinski, such paint-overs in churches are not uncommon. “People find interiors laden with murals and frescos too dark, or they think flat monochrome walls are more modern.” He has worked in the field for some time. His father, Andrew, was an artist in Poland, and when the family emigrated to Canada in 1981, the Roman Catholic church they attended in Kitchener experienced a flood. The elder Mr. Kwiecinski was asked if he could undertake repairs to wall frescos damaged by the water. He did so, and the careers of both him and son Maurice, who was his apprentice, were launched. Many churches – and even work on the Hockey Hall of Fame – later (Andrew passed away in 2009), Maurice would find himself up the scaffold at St. Peter and St. Simon with angels emerging.

For the parish, which prides itself on the historic nature of its building’s architecture, the project has been exciting. The parishioners and visitors to the church find the restoration delightful. The Rev. Canon Geoffrey Sangwine, the incumbent, exclaims that in a city that tears things down and often replaces them with something only ordinary, it’s great to do our part to restore the heritage of both Toronto, the diocese and our parish.

“Beauty is a way to draw us toward God’s grace,” he says. “This is a liturgical painting, expressing the reality we proclaim each Sunday that Heaven and Earth are joined together in worshipping God in Christ.”

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As much as 40 per cent of the homeless shelters in Toronto are occupied by refugees, and Ola and Lewis fit that profile. Ola, who grew up in Nigeria, arrived on a chilly night in October 2017. At the processing station, he was offered a place to sleep at a shelter, but one look at it made him apprehensive and he said he would rather stay on the street. After a couple of phone calls, he was directed to St. Simon’s shelter, where he lived for the next two and a half months. He eventually found employment at a food company, preparing meals to be sent across the city.

Lewis was born in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. An artist and sportsman, he studied design and played football. After joining one of his brothers in the U.S. and coaching soccer at a school in North Carolina, he decided that Canada was where his future lay. In August 2018, he arrived at Pearson airport and applied for refugee status. The Red Cross processed him and sent him to an Ontario Service Centre, where officials picked up the phone and located a bed – at St. Simon’s shelter.

The crowded confines and mix of residents at the shelter were “a shock,” Lewis confesses, but he had few options. Come Sunday, when his fellow residents saw him put on a clean shirt and shine his shoes, they asked him where he was going. “Upstairs,” he answered, “to where you can hear organ music.” Three other young men – all refugees from Nigeria, Uganda and Mexico – joined him.

Lewis attended Roman Catholic schools in the Congo but claims to be non-denominational and just “happy in any church where Jesus is king.” It is a similar story for Ola, who attended an Anglican school in Nigeria. Once in Toronto and settled in the shelter, he says, “I was looking for a church, and then realized there was one right above my head.”

That, of course, was not the end of it. Less than a year later, Ola – now with his own apartment in the west end – continues to come back to St. Peter and St. Simon every Sunday, where he helps with the Sunday School. “The kids help me Canadianize my accent,” he says with a smile. His real reason for pitching in: “This is family. I want to give back. I’m happy I found this place.”

Lewis, who also no longer lives in the shelter, now nevertheless finds himself at the church pretty much every day. In April, just after he obtained his Canadian work permit, he was hired as St. Peter and St. Simon’s verger. The verger, of course, is a traditional role within an Anglican Church, working “for the order and upkeep of a house of worship, including the care of the church buildings, its furnishings, and sacred relics, preparations for liturgy, conduct of the laity, and grave-digging responsibilities.”

Lewis hasn’t had to dig any graves yet, but he opens the church on Sunday mornings as well as frequently through the week, oversees that everything is clean and ready for events, and attends to a hundred and one other chores.

They say God works in mysterious ways. The journeys of Ola and Lewis to find St. Peter and St. Simon – and us them – have surely been in that category of happy marvels.

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