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.

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.

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.

Prince Edward Island is Canada’s smallest province (0.1% of the total land area!) and has a population of only 140.000. It was discovered in 1534 by the French explorer, Jacques Cartier, who went on to find the St. Lawrence River. Settled much later, along with the rest of Acadia, its French population reached 5000 by the time the British took it over in 1758. The French name of the island, Île Saint-Jean, was retained as St. John’s Island until its present title was bestowed in 1798. (Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, was the fourth son of King George III and the father of Queen Victoria; however, the main motivation at the time was that too many other places in the region bore St. John’s name.)

7 The Acadian population was largely deported and replaced by Scottish, Irish and English settlers, later sup- plemented by some United Empire Loyalists. Prince Edward Island became the seventh province of Canada in 1873. (By that time, Manitoba and British Columbia had already joined.) In keeping with Nova Scotia’s second- place status, this smallest province has the highest population density in Canada. Despite its miniscule size, this largely flat and fertile island produces one-third of the country’s potatoes.

The former French capital of Port-la-Joye was renamed Charlottetown after the wife of King George III and incorporated under that name in 1755. Ironically, the city hosted the Confederation Conference of 1864 that led to the formation of Canada, which Prince Edward Island declined to join at that time. Today, Charlotte- town has a metropolitan population of 64,000, almost half of the population of the province.

There is no record of Unitarians in the province prior to 1988, when the Unitarian Fellowship of Prince Ed- ward Island was formed in Charlottetown. They held their meetings in the Chapel at the University of Prince Edward Island and, sadly, they are now in the process of dissolution.

The island is now connected to New Brunswick by the 12.9 km-long Confederation Bridge, built between 1993 and 1997 at a cost of $C 1.3 bn. Another famous landmark is the 19th Century ‘Green Gables’ farmhouse, site of the series of novels written by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

8 Québec is Canada’s second-largest province and, with 8.3 million people, its most populous. Most of its in- habitants, 78% of whom have French as their first language, live near the St. Lawrence River but the rest are dispersed in 237 medium-to-small towns and in the countryside.

The French explorer, Jacques Cartier, made three voyages to Québec between 1534 and 1542, initially seek- ing a passage to the Far East. On his first two voyages, he mapped the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the river as far as the Lachine (meaning ‘China’) Rapids, claiming the region for France. His third expedition landed convicts, free settlers and cattle at the site of present-day Cap-Rouge (now an outer suburb of Quebec City) and two fortifications were built there.

More serious settlement and inland exploration followed under Samuel de Champlain, who established a permanent fur trading post at what is now Quebec City in 1608. In 1611, he built another post on a large island upriver, which became the settlement of Ville-Marie in 1642 and is now the city of Montréal. Fur traders known as coureurs des bois (runners of the woods) reached the Great Lakes in 1615 and Hudson Bay in 1660. After 1627, the Company of New France introduced the seigneurial system of tenant farming as more settlers arrived and New France became a province of the French Empire in 1663.

By 1720, French Canada had a European population of 25,000 and, by 1750, its network of trading posts ex- tended into the Prairies. All that came to a sad end when the Seven Years’ War of 1756–62 was fought in various parts of the world. In 1759, British forces captured Quebec City after the famous Battle of the Plains of Abraham, despite being outnumbered 2-to-1. Fighting continued into the next year, when Montréal capitu- lated to a vastly superior British and American force.

France ceded all of its possessions north of the Ohio River in the 1763 Treaty of Paris on condition that the people of Québec would retain their language, their religion and French civil law. This was affirmed by a Royal Proclamation issued by King George III in 1763, which made the French Canadians the only British subjects in the Empire who did not have to swear allegiance to the Church of England.

Unfortunately, that was not the last time that Quebec City would be the site of a battle. During the American Revolution, the French Canadians were seen as likely supporters of a war against Britain and in favour of the France’s alliance with the United States. In 1775, an American army took Montréal and marched on Quebec City but they were defeated at the Battle of Quebec and driven back across the border. In their turn, the British launched two attacks into New York but both were stopped before they got very far.

The British had never attempted to bring significant numbers of their own people to Québec but, after 1782, large numbers of United Empire Loyalists moved north and settled in the far west of the region. This led to tensions and, in 1791, the area west of the Ottawa River became the separate colony of Upper Canada. The rest of Québec then became known as Lower Canada.

Quebec City has been the capital of the province through all of its transformations and even served two brief stints as the capital of the united Province of Canada in the mid-1800s. Its Old Town was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985, not least because the Upper Town has the only intact city walls north of Mexico. Meanwhile, the former working-class Lower Town is now a beehive of restaurants, boutique shops and nightlife.

10 Today, Quebec City has a metropolitan population of over 800,000 (98.5% of which is Francophone, making it the second largest city in the province. Being the capital, many people work in public administration, but there are also such industries as pulp and paper, printing, processed food, electronics and engineering.

Montréal also has some historic buildings but many were destroyed in fires between 1765 and 1803. The oldest surviving buildings are the Hôtel-Dieu (Hostel of God) hospital, built in 1645 and the Saint-Sulpice Seminary, completed in 1687.

From a later time but also worthy of note is the Notre-Dame Basilica, which stands on the site of a church built by the Sulpician Order in 1672. Constructed in the Gothic style between 1824 and 1843, it remained the largest cathedral in North America for fifty years. The three-peaked hill of Mont Royal is the centerpiece of a large public park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead (of Central park fame) and inaugurated in 1876.

After the British conquest, many Anglophone businessmen came to Montréal and it became a major commercial centre. Reinforced by arriving United Empire Loyalists, they agitated for Upper and Lower Canada to be united in a single self-governing province. The Province of Canada was formed in 1841 and Montréal served as its capital from 1844 to 1849.

11 The city prospered in those times, as the Lachine Canal was completed in 1825, enabling shipping to and from the Great lakes to bypass the rapids and the Victoria Bridge connected it to the Grand Trunk Railway in 1855. Today, Montréal is the second-largest city in Canada and its metropolitan population of 4.1 million (66.5% Francophone) has overflowed from the original island to both banks of the St. Lawrence River. Its port handles 28 million tonnes of shipping annually, including wheat from the Prairies and minerals from Ontario and the eastern US.

And it is here that we find the oldest Unitarian group in Canada, formed at a meeting of English, Irish and American immigrants in 1828. Their first minister, Rev. David Hughes, arrived from England in 1832 but he and several members died in a cholera epidemic a month later. The congregation regrouped and the Unitarian Church of Montreal was formally constituted in 1842, led by Rev. John Cordner from Ireland. Its Grecian building was completed in 1844 and replaced in 1857 by a building with a steeple on the same site.

The congregation continued to grow and yet another church was built downtown in Tudor Gothic style in 1907. It was gutted by a fire eighty years later and a modern new church was built in 1996. So now, over the course of four buildings, the Unitarian Church of Montreal will spend this year commemorating its 175th anniversary with a series of events.

12 During most of that time, the church’s minister was Rev. Charles Eddis, who arrived in 1977 and retired in 1993. He then spent a year as Visiting Minister of the Adelaide Unitarian Church and later became the founding president of the Canadian Unitarian Council. Rev. Eddis remains the Minister Emeritus of the Montréal church and he still makes guest appearances in various places. As of 2006, the church’s eleventh minister (and the first female in that capacity) has been Rev. Diane Rollert.

The Lakeshore UU Congregation is in a southeastern suburb of Montréal facing a portion of the river known as Lake Saint-Louis. Details are scarce but it may have relocated there in 2009 from the nearby suburb of Pointe Claire, as the aforementioned Rev. Charles Eddis was the minister there from 1958 to 1966. He was succeeded by Rev. Fred Cappuccino, who is now the Minister Emeritus and the Congregation does not appear to have a minister at this time.

While we’re here, you may as well see why the Lachine Rapids were such an obstacle to shipping in earlier times.

Lastly, we come to the Unitarian Universalist Church of North Hatley, in a region south of the St. Lawrence River known as the Eastern Townships. It was built as a Universalist church in 1895, but it appears to have changed its name to ‘Unitarian’ in 1953 and adopted the UU name in 1960.

13 And so, as we say ‘good-bye’ to Québec and Canada, let’s look at some more scenery. First, we have a small village on the rugged Gaspé Peninsula and, next, the St-Benoît-du-Lac Abbey on Lake Memphremagog in the Eastern Townships.

Further north is the Mont-Tremblant National Park in the Laurentian Mountains (also known as the Canadian Shield), a favourite ski ground in the winter.

And, for something really different, this is Ungava Bay in the far north. The northern half of Quebec was a district of the Northwest Territory until 1912.

Next time, we will visit Ontario, where possibly one-half of all the Unitarian groups in Canada are located, and the Prairie Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.