“The whole campaign is designed to support local ministry. The health, well-being, confidence, and mission-driven life of our parishes and missions is the goal of all we do as a diocese,” said Bishop Susan Bell. “This campaign presents an important opportunity to resource our local mission action plans.”

In addition to raising money for parish ministry, the campaign would create a new leadership endowment to support curacies as well as the ministries of missioners and church planters. The campaign would also provide a one-time gift to the Anglican Church of Canada’s Healing Fund, or to support the emerging Indigenous Anglican Church in Canada. It would also provide major one-time gifts to support the ministries of St. Matthew’s House, Canterbury Hills endowment, and Christ’s Church Cathedral.

Niagara Anglican

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Faith Tides

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Anglican Life

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Archbishop Peers served as Primate from 1986 to 2004. Major events during his primacy included his official apology for the Church’s role in the residential school system, as well as the achievement of a full communion partnership between the Anglican Church of Canada and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC).

“I am grateful for leadership modelled by +Michael,” Archbishop Linda Nicholls, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, said in a prepared statement on Aug. 1. “He led our Church with courage, humility and grace tempered with humour and a deep compassion. His legacy lives in the work we continue today in reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, the dignity of every human being and our relationships as family with all Christians. May we honour that legacy through our work to live into these gospel commitments.”

National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop Chris Harper said that from an Indigenous perspective, Archbishop Peers “started the whole process of reconciliation” with his 1993 apology. Archbishop Harper said the late former Primate would be remembered as “prayerful, courageous and at the same time a man with great vision to see … the path we have to walk together for healing for all the Church.”

Archbishop Peers was born in Vancouver and raised in the Anglican Church, but left it as a teen. He graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1956 with an undergraduate degree in languages, then earned a degree in translation from the University of Heidelberg the following year.

A polyglot who spoke fluent English, French, German, Spanish and Russian, Archbishop Peers initially planned to pursue a career as a diplomat. But when a friend invited him back to church, he shifted career goals. Obtaining a licentiate in theology from Trinity College, he was ordained as a priest in the Diocese of Ottawa in 1960.

He went on to serve as a university chaplain in Ottawa from 1961 to 1966 and parish priest in Winnipeg from 1966 to 1974. He then began serving as dean of Qu’Appelle. In 1977 he was elected bishop of Qu’Appelle and in 1982 metropolitan of Rupert’s Land, before his election as Primate four years later.

Archbishop Peers is survived by wife Dorothy, three adult children and four grandchildren.

Anglican Journal

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The parish is celebrating 175 years of faith this year. To mark the milestone in a meaningful and outward-facing way, The Little Food Cupboard (TLFC) was created. Modelled after the little library kiosks in many neighbourhoods, TLFC is a self-serve pantry designed to help those experiencing food scarcity.

Non-perishable food items are provided by members of the congregation. The community is also welcome to contribute food and toiletry items. Donations can be delivered to the church during office hours or left in the marked tote box at the eastern entrance to the office area. TLFC has been installed at the eastern entrance to the parking lot, accessible to the street and handicapped parking.

TLFC is beautifully decorated with monarch butterflies, a symbol of resilience. It was built by members of the parish, with an initial donation from the Naylor family in memory of their mother, Kay Naylor Peacock, a long-time supporter of outreach projects in the parish.

The Rev. Michelle Jones, priest-in-charge, sees TLFC as a sign of solidarity during difficult times. “Let’s all pitch in and care for one another,” she says. “Jesus said, ‘I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’” (Matthew 25:35)

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This is true to our roots. PWRDF was born in 1958 out of a compelling desire from Anglicans to offer assistance to families in the wake of a mine disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia.

In recent years, Canada has experienced an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes and floods, affecting thousands of families and individuals. Some communities have been particularly devastated. Time and time again, Anglicans have generously offered their financial support through PWRDF.

Currently, PWRDF accepts donations when a disaster happens, then works with the dioceses affected by the emergency to disburse the funds. This new fund will allow PWRDF to respond quickly when a diocese asks for support, rather than wait to raise funds for individual disasters.

Parishes have expertise in outreach, information-sharing and volunteer engagement, and they have an awareness of their communities. Churches know where and how to reach the most vulnerable, those overlooked by others. Clergy and parishioners may be some of the first responders in an emergency, and they are often among those who will still be there during mid- to longer-term recovery activities.

While PWRDF cannot respond to every emergency in Canada, it considers the severity and impact of the situation, response of other agencies including the government, availability of insurance coverage, and the extent to which additional support is needed. It looks to fill gaps not covered by others, avoiding duplication of services.

Dioceses can access the new In-Canada Emergency Fund by requesting short-, medium- and longer-term support. This could include funds for emergency accommodations, gift cards to purchase food, water and essentials, counselling and post-trauma supports, or locally identified long-term recovery activities to help rebuild community assets and increase community resilience.

Together, we can make a significant impact in the lives of people in Canada affected by disasters, offering solidarity and hope for those who have lost so much.

Anglicans can donate directly to the In-Canada Emergency fund at any time online at www.pwrdf.org or by cheque to PWRDF at 80 Hayden St., 3rd floor, Toronto, ON, M4Y 3G2. Please indicate In-Canada Emergency in the memo field. Anglicans can also donate during business hours by calling 416-822-9083 (or leave a message toll-free at 1-866-308-7973).

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Our commitment began in 2017-18 with a major campaign to raise funds to buy winter clothes for children at the Eenchokay Birchstick School in Pikangikum, a remote fly-in northern Ontario First Nations community. The result was 65 boxes with snowsuits, jackets, pants, boots, mitts and hats, which were transported over the winter ice road by Rotary Honouring Indigenous Peoples in partnership with Trucks for Change.

In December 2018, the school’s principal sent a letter to the National Indigenous Archbishop requesting financial support for the Grade 8 students who would be travelling to southern Ontario in June 2019 for their year-end graduation trip.

The request for donations was circulated to Anglican Indigenous allies, and because of All Saints’ recent involvement with Pikangikum, we became the repository for the donations facilitated by Dave Gordon’s connections with Indigenous allies.

Unfortunately, the students were not able to travel to southern Ontario as planned because it became necessary to evacuate the community due to forest fires two days before their flights to Toronto. Then concerns over COVID-19 prevented travel for the next three years. Fundraising continued during these years, resulting in a substantial sum.

Happily, the 2023 Grade 8 students were able to travel to southern Ontario for their year-end school trip. They arrived in Toronto on June 5 and spent a great week visiting the CN Tower, Ripley’s Aquarium, Canada’s Wonderland and the Ontario Science Centre. They also enjoyed a Blue Jays baseball game, the latest Spiderman movie, a trip to Niagara Falls and a shopping trip to Square One.

Donations being held by All Saints were provided to the Pikangikum group prior to their travels. All Saints, King City, Christ Church, Kettleby, St. Mary Magdalene, Schomberg, Church of the Incarnation, Toronto and other Anglican church Indigenous allies provided funds to support the group’s activities and additional spending money for the students.

All Saints, King City maintains communications and relations with Eenchokay Birchstick School staff for future Grade 8 graduation trip opportunities.

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Refugees and refugee claimants, wildfire evacuees and residents of encampments may be the most visible examples of displacement before us in this moment, but there are many others. Indigenous people have experienced wave after wave of displacement from their lands, culture and families through removal from their traditional territories to the Indian residential school system to the Sixties Scoop and the ongoing impacts of the child welfare system. Migrant workers, unable to support their families at home due to economic and climate obstacles, must leave their families for months to work on Canadian farms under a system that denies them basic rights and protections and leaves them vulnerable to exploitation. Farmers themselves are displaced by once-protected agricultural lands being re-zoned for development, while native species of wildlife and flora face habitat loss that could lead to their extinction. Lower-income tenants are vulnerable to landlords who use above-guideline rent increases and renovictions to replace them with higher-paying tenants. Inadequate wages and income support levels force more and more people to depend on food banks and meal programs – and that experience of food insecurity undermines people’s sense of their place in the world. Indeed, ours is a world of rampant displacement, physically, economically, socially and more.

How do we inhabit such a world? This is the theme of this year’s diocesan Outreach & Advocacy Conference: “Living in Exile: Inhabiting a World of Displacement.” The scriptures are full of themes of exile and displacement, and how we are to live faithfully in such conditions. In this age, we may have “no lasting city” (Hebrews 13:14), yet in the practices of trust in God, sharing what we have and building up our communities, we resist the powers that uproot and separate us from each other.

The original keynote speaker for this year’s conference, Dr. Mary Jo Leddy, well-known for her work with refugee claimants at Romero House, unfortunately had to withdraw in late August due to medical reasons. We are pleased to announce that Dr. Brian Walsh has agreed to be our new keynote speaker. Dr. Walsh, who served for many years as adjunct professor at the Toronto School of Theology and pastor of the Wine Before Breakfast community at the University of Toronto, is the co-author of Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement, whose 15th anniversary edition is being released this fall.

“From the countless thousands living on the streets, in shelters and squats under bridges, to an international socio-economic, geo-political and climate refugee crisis, to the literal burning up of our creational home in wildfires and temperatures that border upon uninhabitability, displacement and homelessness have become the socio-economic, ecological, cultural and spiritual reality of our times,” writes Dr. Walsh. “We need to address this crisis with biblical depth, lived experience, comprehensive vision and radical hope.”

“Living in Exile: Inhabiting a World of Displacement” will be held on Saturday, Oct. 28 from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The conference will be held online via Zoom, with separate sessions for the opening plenary, morning and afternoon workshops and the closing plenary discussion. Registration is required for each separate session. The closing plenary will offer a chance for participants to reflect together on what they have learned, and what they have been challenged or inspired to do differently going forward.

There is no charge for the conference. All are welcome to attend, for the entire day or only a part! Visit www.toronto.anglican.ca/outreachconference for more details and to register.

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Around 1349, during the first and most horrific episode of the Black Death in Europe, John Clyn of the Friars Minor, Kilkenny, wrote a chronicle of events that includes blank pages at the end, and this passage: “… so that the writing does not perish with the writer, or the work fail with the workman, I leave parchment for continuing the work, in case anyone should still be alive in the future.”

Here, at my little church, I stand under a sky weirdly dim and orange, and smell the acrid scent of wildfires hundreds of miles away. The weather report some days reads simply, “Smoke,” and the people in power seem as unwilling or unable to take meaningful action as the kings of Israel and Judah were to listen to Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah. The world is on fire, and nothing is normal anymore – there is no such thing. The food suppliers for our meal programs are increasingly likely to have shortages, and prices seem to rise every week. Refugees sleep on the street outside the Streets to Homes referral centre.

Crisis intersects with crisis, over and over. Late one night I have to crawl across the bathroom floor to get into a stall where someone has overdosed. A few days later someone goes down in the churchyard, but before my colleague and I get there, a small person dressed in black, with dark glasses, has taken control, grabbed a naloxone kit and administered the first dose, assigned my colleague to time doses while I am doing crowd control. When the man who went down is conscious and responding, the small dark person disappears. No one is sure who they were. A child of humanity, called to the moment.

I find myself obsessively watching livestreams from a feral cat rescue centre in British Columbia. Wildfires and smoke are their constant background too, but in the livestream, gentle people tend to small creatures with keen individual attention, responding to their particular needs, understanding their traumas, giving them the kind of precise and personal care I can only wish for every being in this world, the struggling people camped outside my church, the hurt people in the streets. If the feral cat livestream is the only place I can reliably find this model of care right now, that is at least something.

I think that I cannot summon the hopefulness of the writer we call Mark, but then I also remember that his telling of the good news concludes, in one of literature’s more daring moves, without a resurrection appearance, and with the sentence, “They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” Like us, Mark lived in a seesaw tension – the good news beginning, yet enveloped in silence and fear; perhaps, like John Clyn, leaving a blank space in case someone came after him, without even being sure that someone would. I search for ways to believe that there is a beginning in all this, for reasons to leave those blank pages towards the future. Last spring I cycled through a path of hurricane damage on Prince Edward Island; great trees devastated, dunes erased along the north shore, but below the fallen trunks the pale Jurassic shapes of ferns slowly unfolding, the survivors, so much older than anything human. Marsh marigolds along the stream banks, among the stripped branches. Creation’s persistent, the dearest freshness deep down things which Hopkins named. Though the last lights off the black West went.

So I get up every day under the strange skies, and I say morning prayer, and I try to take my anxious and irritable self into the world to hold on to a small island of humanity, a community which, we may hope, can bide in the shade of the great events, can try to believe still in the value of care, in the discipline of the needs of others carefully understood, in the possibility of acceptance, and of forgiveness when we fail. There is no certain future. But here and now, this is what we can do.

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