Unitarians of Eastern Canada

UNITARIANS OF EASTERN CANADA By Mike McPhee As this year of 2017 is the 150th anniversary of Canada’s foundation, I mean to extend my earlier report on British Columbia and its Unitarians to the other nine provinces. This will need two instalments, moving from east to west. Canada Day, 01 July, marks the coming into force of the British North America Act, passed in Westminster earlier in 1867. That Act amalgamated the three colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to form the Dominion of Canada and provided its Constitution as a country in its own right. The former colony of Canada was split into its two original components, now called Québec and Ontario. Today, there are four Maritime Provinces, as Prince Edward Island and the former Dominion of Newfound- land and Labrador joined the Confederation later. Indeed, Newfoundland has the distinction of being both the first British possession in North America and the last province to join Canada (in 1949). Together with Labrador, the region’s coasts were explored and settled by Viking, British, French and Portuguese navigators over time. (Labrador is named after the Portuguese captain, João Fernandes Lavrador, who came there in 1498.) Of greatest interest to the various European powers at the time were the Grand Banks on the continental shelf south of the island. They was discovered in 1498 by John Cabot, a Genoese sailor commissioned by Henry VII of England, who reported that the Banks were so full of fish that they could be caught in wicker baskets. 1 Sir Humphrey Gilbert took formal possession of the island under a letter patent from Queen Elizabeth I in 1583, by which time Portuguese, Basque and English fisherman had long been active on the Grand Banks. Despite a number of English settlements being established there, including St. John’s, the French built some of their own and decades of destructive fighting followed until they withdrew in 1713. Today, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has a population of 515,000, roughly 20% of whom live in the capital city of St. John’s. A further 30% live on the surrounding Avalon Peninsula. Due to the large amount of Irish immigrants, especially during the Potato Famine, Newfoundland and Labrador is the only English-speaking province with a Catholic majority. (The twin-towered building on the hill is the Basilica of St. John the Baptist, completed in 1855; the other building on the skyline is a cultural centre known as ‘The Rooms’, built in 2005.) While Newfoundland is often described as a bleak place, it is not lacking in scenery. Here are a couple of pictures of the Gros Morne National Park on the Northern Peninsula of the island. 2 Despite its mineral wealth and hydro-power facilities, Labrador has only 5% of the total population. Its two largest towns, Happy Valley-Goose Bay on the coast and Labrador City near the border with Québec, have populations of just under 10,000. The former (shown at left) hosts a large air force base that was built during World War II, while the latter has a huge iron mine. At the northern extremity of Labrador is the Torngat Mountains National Park, the largest such park in Atlantic Canada. Unfortunately, Newfoundland and Labrador is the only province that has no Unitarian churches or fellow- ships. However, it is reported that the very first Unitarians in Canada were a family of traders from Liverpool who established themselves in St. John’s in 1811 and a group called the Avalon Unitarian Fellowship was formed there in 2000 that lasted till at least 2006 before dissolving. Nova Scotia is Canada’s second-smallest province but, with a population of 920,000, it manages to have the country’s second-highest population density. Largely flat and fertile, its prominent features are the Bay of Fundy, noted for fast-flowing tides that reach a height of 17 metres, and the large Cape Breton Island. 3 Nova Scotia was discovered by the aforementioned John Cabot, who in 1497 became the first European to set foot on the North American mainland since the time of the Vikings. However, it was the French who first colonised the region, founding their first permanent settlement in the New World in 1605 at Port Royal on the Bay of Fundy. The eventual colony of Acadia comprised the whole of Nova Scotia and what are now New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. An invasion by Scots in 1629 (sent by King James I), in which Port Royal was captured, was defeated after three years. The region was afflicted by the same French-British warfare that occurred in Newfoundland until Britain conquered the peninsula in 1710. The French settlers remained until they were expelled in the mid-1700s, but France retained Cape Breton Island (know to them as Île Royale) and built the massive Fort Louisbourg there in 1713. The island was restored to British Acadia (now called Nova Scotia) in 1758. Halifax was established in 1849 in a major operation involving 13 transport ships and soon became the new capital. Today, it is a major port and commercial hub, with a population of 400,000. There are also shipyards on the harbour and farms on the outskirts. The new settlement was fearful of attack by Indians, Acadians and French forces, so the Citadel was quickly built on high ground. Over time, the city grew and many stately buildings were erected. 4 One of those was the Universalist Church of Halifax, built in 1874. The congregation was formed in 1837 by some lay people who had been inspired by the writings of the American Universalist, Hosea Ballou, and they built a small church in 1843. With the help of a wealthy family from the West Indies, a larger church was built called the Church of the Redeemer. For over 70 years, that church was served by a succession of very capable Canadian, British and American ministers, who often engaged in heated debates with the more orthodox clergy in other churches. Unfortunately, the congregation (and the whole Maritimes region) fell on hard times after World War I and the building was sold in 1948. After the merger that formed the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961, however, a number of local Unitarians joined forces with the Universalists to purchase a historic double house, now called the Universalist Unitarian Church of Halifax. From 1969, the church has once again been led by full-time ministers. Halifax will have a somber centenary to commemorate this year; namely, the Halifax Explosion that occurred on 06 December 1917. A French cargo ship laden with wartime explosives collided with another vessel in the harbour, caught fire and exploded. Estimated at 2.9 kilotons of TNT, this was the largest man- made explosion before the nuclear ages. So much water was vaporised that the bottom of the harbour was exposed. An entire district south of the city centre was devastated, with 2000 people killed and 9000 injured. It would be wrong to leave Nova Scotia on such a sad note, so here are some scenic pictures. Kejimkujik National Park is in the southern end of the peninsula, while the Cape Breton Highlands National Park covers almost the whole northern end of the island. 5 New Brunswick has a population of 750,000, of which one-third are Acadians. (That term is now refers to all Francophones in the Maritimes.) The populace is more evenly distributed than elsewhere, with just under half living in the three main cities of Mocton, St. John and Fredericton. The province also has an unusual history, as only the French settled there and they kept the region after the British took Nova Scotia. Three forts were built along the border, including the star-shaped Fort Beauséjour, completed in 1752. However, the whole region was overrun by the British between 1755 and 1759, after which settlers from the American colonies came to take the properties of the expelled Acadians. During the American Revolution there was a number of Patriot attacks on both parts of Nova Scotia, all of which were unsuccessful. After 1781, some 33,000 United Empire Loyalists moved to the region, greatly increasing the population. New Brunswick was therefore made a separate colony in 1784. Development was rapid after that, with two fleets from Massachusetts landing at Fort Howe on the St. John River to build what is now the city of St. John. In 1785, it became the first incorporated town in Canada and it now has a population of 130,000. 6 However, St. John was considered too vulnerable to American attack, so the capital of the new colony was built well inland in 1785 and named Fredericton. It had a sophisticated town plan by the standards of that era and King’s College, now the University of New Brunswick, was founded in that same year. Today, it has a population of 95,000. Unfortunately, we are going to be disappointed here again by our Unitarian confreres. There appears to have been a Unitarian Universalist Church of St. John that was formed some time after 2006 is in the process of dissolution even as I speak. The Unitarian Fellowship of Fredericton was formed before 2006 and still exists, but little is known of its history. So, one last look as we leave New Brunswick. The Fundy National Park near St. John is famous for ‘flower pot’ structures like the Hopewell Rocks, which bear witness to the forceful tides in the Bay. Mount Carleton Provincial Park, near the border with Quebec, has the highest mountain in the Canadian Maritimes.

Load more