Chapter 3 --"This
church opens wide the doors" 1903-1919
Once again the Christ Church Committee searched widely for the right man.
Clergymen in Toronto and Charlottetown were in contention; H.J. Cambie was asked
to interview a candidate in Quebec during a trip east. By March the church
committee had found the man they wanted in London, Ontario. He was Cecil
Caldbeck Owen, the third rector and third to graduate from Wycliffe College.
Owen began a long association of Christ Church with the Canadian military.
Owen was a veteran of Canada's sole military expedition fought within
its borders, the Riel Rebellion of 1885. Born in Kent, England, in 1864, Owen
had come to Canada by way of Jamacia (where his father had been a Church of
England clergyman) at the age of 19 to attend Wycliffe. When the Metis and
their Indian allies ambushed the North West Mounted Police at Duck Lake, and
alarmed white settlers across the Prairies, Owen interrupted his theological
studies to don the pillbox cap and dark green uniform of a private in the
Queen's Own Rifles and head west on the brand new and not quite completed
Canadian Pacific Railway. Many years later he would recall marching from Swift
Current to Battleford, Saskatchewan, to fight the Cree at Cut Knife Creek. Over
60 years later he would remember a young soldier with whom he had shared a
blanket the night before the battle. Owen's comrade was one of eight shot dead
in a skirmish that nearly turned into a disaster for the 400 members of the
North West Field Force under Lt.-Colonel William Otter. Three hundred braves
with old rifles and bows and arrows pinned them down for six hours. The
Canadian troops had better arms, but most of them, like Owen, were very young
and very green.
By 1903 the 39-year-old Owen had long graduated from Wycliffe, worked at
St. Peter's, Toronto, and Holy Trinity, Winnipeg--where he had started a house
for 125 "hard-ups" during poor economic times--and was now at Cronyn
Memorial in London, Ontario. He came highly recommended. The committee on March
12 offered $2500 per annum--over $200 per month. Owen arrived in June.
Vancouver was growing again, and Bishop John Dart (who had succeeded Bishop
Sillitoe in 1895) held his diocesan executive meetings in Vancouver, not New
Westminster. The city was poised to undergo its second period of rapid growth.
When Owen arrived, the population had just passed 30,000. Ten years later it
would quadruple to 120,000. Several in the Christ Church congregation, the
early settlers, would become rich from real estate. Many would give generously
to the church at Georgia and Burrard, and were to make it for years the
wealthiest in the diocese.
By early 1904 the parish was busy renovating the basement, fixing the
rectory roof, organizing an anniversary social, and designing a gallery for the
south end of the church which would add 120 more seats, which was completed the
next January for $1,125, and quickly paid for. H.J. Cambie offered to place one
of the first memorial windows in the chancel; his offer was gratefully
accepted. It pictured Christ ascending, and forms the central panel of the
sanctuary window today. The organist, Walter Evans, asked for a motor to pump
the organ; the church committee tried to put him off by referring the request
to a subcommittee; Evans ordered the motor anyway. At the end of January, the
curate, Henry Roy, resigned and returned to Winnipeg. His position was
temporarily filled by the Rev. William McLean of Emerson, Manitoba. For the
permanent position, Owen sought a young student at Wycliffe college,
25-year-old A.H. Sovereign, from Woodstock, Ontario, the first of many
clergyman to serve at Christ Church who would later become a bishop.
"Savvy" Sovereign arrived in the spring of 1906.
Christ Church became an increasingly busy place. In 1905 the choir had
grown to 78 members, the Sunday School to 453, with 34 teachers.
("Scarcely a week goes by without our needing a new Sunday School
teacher," the rector wrote in an annual report.) Twenty-seven members of
the Women's Auxiliary prepared hampers of food and bales of clothing for Native
Indians up the coast. Some 58 Daughters of the King visited hospitals and
collected money for missions in Tokyo. The mission to the Chinese on Homer
Street worked with 30 and sometimes more "boys."
One of Owen's special interests was the Boys' Brigade. Every Thursday
night Owen as Captain presided at drill held from 7 until 9 p.m. The annual fee
was 50 cents, and for $2 the boys were fitted in a uniform of blue and white,
with caps made by the Daughters of the King. Twice in 1905 they marched in
parade to church. "Its methods are military drill, gymnastic exercises,
healthful games and sports, coupled with religious and other moral instruction,
and, in all things, boys are taught that religion is a manly thing and should
go hand in hand with work and play," explained Owen in the 1905 annual
report. Owen's only son Harold, 11-years-old in 1905, excelled in the group his
father had organized. He played on the Brigade basketball team that won the
British Columbia championship. He was an outstanding in gymnastics. The best
part of young Harold's summer was the annual Brigade camp on Bowen Island.
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1908 Duke of Connaught's Own Regiment at Christ Church (Vancouver Public Library Photo 8691) |
Busy as the congregation was, there was still time for disputes over
ritual. Severely evangelical in style, Christ Church's altar was devoid of any
furnishings save an offertory plate. High church adherents nicknamed the parish
"St. Alms' Dish." That plate, they felt, took the place a cross
should have occupied. Clergy celebrated communion to the side of the altar, not
in front. Services were said, not sung, at least not before 1905. That year
Owen began to sing some of the responses in the Evening Service, and caused
immediate upset. While many on the church committee accepted the change, former
people's warden Walter Hepburn organized a petition in opposition and collected
41 names. In March, 1906, the committee met without Owen. Hepburn moved that
the rector be "respectfully requested to discontinue the changes
complained of." H.J. Cambie proposed a compromise: the committee would
accept the rector's new way of conducting the service, but asked that in future
he consult before trying anything new. The motion passed, 5 to 2. Although a
low churchman, Owen still felt the Eucharist held an important place in the
church's ritual. In several annual reports he chided parishioners for avoiding
the Lord's Table. "As we see our large congregation so often leave only a
small minority to represent them at the Holy Communion, we wonder whether it represents
the interest which the congregation feels in the deeper side of Spiritual
truth."
The flock continued to grow and in June, 1906, Owen proposed enlarging
the church again. William T. Dalton, another architect from Winnipeg, was
engaged, and a building committee formed. They proposed lengthening and
widening the church to the north at a cost of $21,000. A professional fund
raiser, Robert Lee, was hired for $35 a month--he kept a five per cent
commission on cash collected. Soon nearly $16,800 had been raised, and the
church was required to borrow only about $5,000. The seating capacity was now
1,250, an increase of 400. Part of the process involved dissolution of the old
Christ Church Building Company, which had built the original church, and formal
incorporation of the parish on August 1, 1908, under terms of the Anglican
Synod New Westminster Act.
Meanwhile Miss M.A. Butt, a trained nurse, was hired in 1907 as
deaconess at $300 a year--for which the church received great value. She sang
in the choir, took charge of the infant class at Sunday school, taught at the
Chinese Mission, visited "hundreds" of the sick and poor. Sovereign
lectured to the Men's Club on topics as varied as "The Eye and How We
See," and "The Greeks and their Early Philosophy." Owen was in
charge of the Church Missionary Society Gleaners' Union where papers were
presented on "The Evils of Mohammedanism" and "Hinduism, A
Religion of Despair." Christ Church began to be the scene of more
marriages; in 1905 there had been 25 -- seven years later, there were 208
couples united. "Our proximity to the Court House may be ranked among the
`ill winds'," joked Owen in an annual report. All this activity made a
great impression upon a visitor who passed through Vancouver in 1911. Edward Disney
Farmer, born in Ireland, was the son of a Church of England clergyman. He had
made his fortune in Texas raising cattle. On his first visit to Christ Church
he left a large contribution on the collection plate. He was to follow this
with generous annual gifts and remember Christ Church in his will.
The same year, 1911, saw installation of a new Hope-Jones Organ,
manufactured by Wurlitzer, with over one thousand pipes and two electric motors
-- no organ blower needed for this instrument. It was purchased for $21,000 and
given to the church by Frederick L. Beecher, a lumber merchant, and named in
memory of his pioneer parents. At the inaugural recital on October 3, 1911,
church organist Ferdinand Dunkley played the Largo from the "New
World" symphony by Dvorak, three selections from Wagner, and two pieces by
the blind English organist Wolstenholme. Another generous gift came in 1911
from the widow of Alfred Edward Lewis, a long-time parishioner, the crucifixion
window that fills the wall of the west transept. The $3,000 gift was not
installed without controversy. A special vestry meeting was called June 11,
1912. A former people's warden, W.J. Twiss, and several older members of the
congregation through the window too high church in style. Some objected that
the window had been accepted before the design was approved by a vestry. H.J.
Cambie felt it might be objectionable if placed behind the communion table, but
was acceptable in the transept. It was A.P. Judge's eloquence that carried the
meeting:
"We are Protestants. Why? Because our parents and surroundings were
Protestant. Had we been the children of Roman Catholic parents, do you think we
should have been Protestants? Had our parents belonged to any other
denomination, would we have been Anglicans? Probably not. God chose our
religion for us. Are we to say that God's views are not right and that other
men's views are wrong? No. "What was the crowning point of Our Lord's
life? His death. Is there anything wrong in this picture which illustrates that
crowning point? It is a picture we can look upon with both sorrow and joy.
Sorrow that it occurred. Joy that it is past and that by it Our Lord redeems
the world."
Christ Church's congregation had changed since its founding 24 years
earlier. The crucifixion window was approved with no dissenting votes.
Owen himself was no man to shy from conflict when it came to promoting
his theological position. Bishop Dart returned from England in 1908 with funds
from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (the S.P.G.), the Anglo-Catholic
missionary society. He used the money to buy land upon for a theological
college to serve western Canada. It would be called St. Mark's -- and it would
train clergy in the bishop's own high church tradition. Hearing of the bishop's
action, Owen and his assistant Sovereign called a meeting at the home of the
dependable H.J. Cambie. If the bishop was to train high churchmen, they would
train low. For that purpose money was also available in the home country, from
the Church Missionary Society (the C.M.S.), the S.P.G.'s low church
counterpart. Owen's group decided to call its school Latimer College, after
Hugh Latimer, a churchman burned at the stake in 1555 by Mary Queen of Scots
during a brief restoration of Roman Catholicism in England. The bishop was
furious when he learned of Owen's plan by reading an article in the Vancouver
_Province_. "This movement I utterly condemn," he told a church
synod. Owen wrote the bishop he had "no disloyal feelings." He had
not wilfully gone behind the bishop's back, he insisted, and had intended to
inform him of the plans. The night before the newspaper article appeared Owen
had called at Dart's home, but the bishop was not in. Dart still vowed never to
recognize a rival to his St. Mark's. Undaunted, Owen's group brought out from
Toronto the Rev. W.H. Vance, a Wycliffe man (of course!), to set up Latimer.
Before Vance arrived, the bishop suddenly died. At the 1910 synod called
to choose his successor, Owen nominated his predecessor at Christ Church, L.
Norman Tucker. The Diocese of New Westminster, however, was still very much
high church territory. The contest wasn't even close; Tucker never got more
than five of thirty-six clerical votes cast. The diocese chose Adam de Pencier
of St. Paul's. The new bishop too refused to license Vance as principal at
Latimer, so Vance was offically on Christ Church's staff as an assistant when
he established the college in October, 1910, at 1548 Haro Street. Latimer
students served as Sunday school teachers and clergy assistants at Christ
Church. Not for another two years was the bishop able to open St. Mark's at
1249 Davie, just five minutes stroll from its rival on Haro. It was not until
1927 that the two colleges merged on the Point Grey campus of the University of
British Columbia as the Anglican Theological College.
The diocese could ill afford two theological colleges after 1911 as hard
economic times returned to British Columbia at the end of the year. To help the
unemployed, Christ Church did what it could. "Some very sad cases have
come before our notice this winter," wrote Owen in the annual report,
"...and 366 men have been given work round the Church during winter, a
system of relief having been fairly well established by which every able bodied
man is given two hours work... No money relief is ever given, except in very
special cases which are personally known to the Rector." In 1913 the Poor
Fund ran a substantial deficit, as expenditures mounted to over $1,100
"...[T]he Church of England has an exceptionally large number of what are
sometimes described as the 'respectable poor,' those who have seen better days
and dread the very thought of going to the city for relief, but who have been
faithful members of the Church, and whom it seems natural that the Church
should assist," wrote the rector. As expenditures outran revenues, Owen
tried the humorous approach in a leaflet: "To pledge or not to pledge!
That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in a man to take The gospel free, and
another man foot the bill, Or sign a pledge and pay toward the Church
expenses!..."
Staff turnover was a problem. "Our much loved assistant Mr.
Sovereign" (as Owen described him) had left in 1910 to found St. Mark's in
Kitsilano. The Rev. Mark H. Jackson from Atlin served at Christ Church less
than a year, followed by the Rev. R.B. Day, who for a time rented the Majestic
Theatre on Hastings Street on Sunday evenings for services. Despite his new
Wurlitzer, organist Dunkey left for Seattle, to be replaced in 1912 by a shy
but talented 27-year-old from Ely Cathedral in England, Frederick Chubb. Miss
Butt, the deaconess, had left and was not replaced, when the demand for parish
visiting was heavy. "We have had a good deal of sickness amongst the
[Sunday school] scholars," the school's superintendent wrote in 1912,
"and lost two of our number, whom the Good Shepherd took to His fold. Some
of our scholars have also lost their parents during the year." The next
year the rector reported: "There have been twenty-six cases of cancer
alone on our sick list during the last twelve months."
The rector himself was hospitalized for weeks following an accident on
May 24, 1913. He was riding an undertaker's carriage down a hill on the
Westminster Road (now Kingsway) when a horse slipped near the road's
intersection with West Broadway. Owen either jumped or fell from his seat and
landed on his head and fractured his skull. As he lay unconscious in Vancouver
General, so many people enquired as to his condition that an extra switchboard
operator was called in to handle calls. Ironically, the burial was of a man
killed a few days before in an accident involving a runway horse. Owen took
most of six months to recuperate. The cumulative effect of so many problems
affected the tone of Christ Church. In the annual report of 1915 was a brief
notice, one which perhaps would not have been written with such feeling a few
years earlier:
"Our Invitation. To all who mourn and need comfort-- to all who are
weary and need rest--to all who are friendless and need friendship--to all who
are homeless and need sheltering love--to all who pray and all who do not, but
ought--to all who sin and need a Saviour--to whosoever will come, this church
opens wide the doors and makes free a place to worship God, and, in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ, says to every one WELCOME"
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The Rev. C.C. Owen (right), third rector, |
However, much greater trials lay ahead, as war came to Europe. When
Britain's ultimatum to Germany to withdraw from Belgium expired on August 4,
1914, there was little question in British Columbia -- as in the rest of
English-speaking Canada -- that Canadians must come to the aid of the Old
Country. In less than three weeks the first troop train had left Vancouver for
Valcartier, Quebec. Among the first to go was Harold Owen, who had been home
that summer from Toronto after his second year of studies at Wycliffe College.
His father had been honorary chaplain to Vancouver's Sixth Regiment for ten
years. Father and son posed in military uniform for a picture in front of the
rectory the day before he left -- Harold looking anxious in an ill-fitting
uniform, his father with a confident gaze, riding crop and gloves in hand. The
rector had told the church committee that he might be made chaplain of the
British Columbia contingent. The committee resolved that if such was to be, he
would go with the committee's full approval. Eight months later, on April 26,
1915, Owen was appointed chaplain to the 29th battalion and left in May for the
front.
Letters written home described a war that seemed strange, but bearable;
many were shared in Christ Church's parish magazine. In March of 1915 the Rev.
R.B. Day, who had enlisted early on, reported: "We are now resting for a
day or two and enter the trenches again tomorrow. When we were last in we
called over to the Germans and they answered. In fact, one of our boys who
speaks German had quite a conversation. It seems funny to talk with a man in a
friendly way one minute and be trying to shoot each other the next."
Colonel William Hart McHarg remarked that conditions were better at the front
than when his men had trained in England: "Our trenches are pretty decent,
planks along the bottom in most places and the men can keep their feet pretty
dry. It is better than Salisbury Plain in this respect... I have been keeping
remarkably well. The food is remarkably good, and we are all getting fat."
But he had to add: "You will have seen that we are continually having
casualties -- six during our last three days in the trenches."
Within weeks, on April 22, 1915, at Ypres, Belgium, Canadian troops were
for the first time to come under fierce German fire. On the first day
Hart-McHarg was hit. He died the following day. Twelve days later, after more
fierce fighting, Harold Owen wrote his mother: "I have lost nearly every
personal friend within the contingent... It may sound unutterably selfish, but
war is robbed of all its tinsel, glory and pomp when a hero friend smiles his
last, while another hypnotized by the spirit of wholesale sacrifice steps into
his place with no hope of ever coming back... The Canadian division put not
only its hand but its body and soul into the breach and suffered it to remain,
broken and mutilated. Those who survived ask themselves: `What right have we to
live when the rest have been taken?'"
Back in Canada the state of Christ Church was not good. Attendance was
down. The Poor Fund required over a thousand dollars again for the year. The
reliable H.J. Cambie, now 79 years old, was drafted to serve once again as
warden. To raise revenue, the church committee published a set of fees for
weddings: the verger would be paid $1 for a quiet wedding during regular hours,
$2 for a ceremony after hours, and $5 for a wedding with choir and organ; the
choir would get $15; and the organist's fee was $10. In addition a
"customary" but unspecified fee was expected by the clergyman. The
deficit still mounted. The church committee at its December, 1915, meeting was
told the parish was short $2,000 for the year. They also learned that Owen had
been promoted to the rank of major. The committee voted to send congratulations
to the rector -- and to ask him, now that he would be earning a higher salary,
to add to his wife's allowance, thus relieving the church of the $50 per month
stipend they had been paying her. In January, 1916, Mrs. Owen immediately
relinquished her stipend when she saw how strapped were church finances.
On February 1, 1916, a telegram came from Belgium. "Harold is
promoted to service with God. OWEN." The previous day the rector's only
son had been killed near Flanders by a rifle shot to the head while covering
the retreat of three of his men he had led through "No Man's Land" to
the German wire. The 22-year-old lieutenant had been buried the same day two
miles from Messines on the edge of the grounds of a chateau. Major Owen had
ridden hard for three hours to be at the funeral. In Vancouver the next Sunday,
both the 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. services were dedicated to Harold's memory. The
church was full. The rector-in-charge, Charles S. McGaffin, preached from the
text, Hebrews 2:10 "It became God...in bringing many sons unto glory to
make the Captain of their salvation perfect, through suffering." The
choir, of which Harold had been a member, more than filled the chancel. Some of
his favorite hymns were chosen, among them: "Fight the Good Fight,"
"Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go," "For All the Saints." In
the evening Harold's favorite anthem "Crossing the Bar" was sung. Mr.
Chubb very feelingly played the Dead March at the close of both services.
In July, Owen decided to resign as rector and so informed the church
committee by cable. He said it was his duty to serve till the end of the war.
He had a short furlough in Vancouver. A vestry meeting asked the rector to
reconsider. At first Owen refused. The church committee persisted, and promised
to increase revenues by at least $2500 per year. So Owen withdrew his
resignation, and agreed to return as rector once the war was over. He then
returned to the front. The committee granted Mrs. Owen's wish that a memorial
window to Harold be placed in the church. She started work hand lettering a
service roll to list many of the 500 officers and men from the congregation
serving at the front. Both the list and the window are found in the nave of
Christ Church today.
No one knew when the war would end, or when the rector would return. In
late 1916 McGaffin agreed to serve as rector-in-charge for one more year. There
was a personal reason to stay: he was courting Ida Jean Cambie, the daughter of
H.J. Cambie. Their marriage August 1, 1917, was a rare happy event for the
congregation, breaking the gloomy news of war. The newlyweds took a brief
wedding trip east by train, and while in Collingwood, Ontario, the groom
received an offer of a rectorship. McGaffin decided to accept this permanent
post.
It was difficult to operate a large parish like Christ Church with
borrowed clergy and no one could be found, either locally or in eastern Canada,
who was willing to serve on a temporary basis until the war ended. Latimer
College Principal W.H. Vance took services, as did Archdeacon Francis
Heathcote, who accepted a silk umbrella in lieu of remuneration. The deficit
was cut to about $1,000 a year, but that expenditures had to be cut sharply.
The church that had been spending $14,400 in 1912 was now down to a budget of
$11,200. The city's taxes of $1,300 were unpaid.
Meanwhile in France, Owen could not decide whether to come home or
remain at the front for the duration. The committee pleaded in letters that
there was an "urgent need of a permanent rector." They argued that
the welfare of more than one parish alone was at stake. Three "low"
Anglican churches in Vancouver were without leaders: St. George's and St.
Mark's, as well as Christ Church. Finally word came in December: Owen had
decided to take three month's leave and would be back early in 1918.
In the chair once again at the March committee meeting, Owen took
charge. Money would be found to wipe out the tax arrears. The congregation
would hold a monthly meeting. A monthly magazine would be started. Receipts
began to increase. The choir stalls could be elevated. Framed notices of
services would be placed in hotel lobbies again. Things would return to normal,
almost. Then in June Owen read the committee a telegram that offered him the
position of senior chaplain to men returning to Vancouver. He told the
committee had had accepted the position, and tendered his resignation from
Christ Church -- this time for good.
After a missionary trip to Chile, Major the Rev. Cecil C. Owen would serve
for a quarter century as chaplain at Vancouver General and Shaughnessy
Hospitals. Among his achievements was a role in organizing the "Save the
Children" Fund. Concerned by the persecution of Armenia by the Turks, he
adopted an Armenian boy, Luder Keshishian, who excelled as a youth in school
and the church. In the Second World War, Luder joined the Royal Canadian Air
Force, and was lost somewhere over France. In 1947 the the Vancouver regiment
of the Irish Fusiliers paraded to Christ Church Cathedral to mark the end of
Owen's career at age 81. Owen died in Vancouver on Christmas Eve, 1954.
In late 1918, hopes rose that the war would end. The women of the church prepared what were to be the last Christmas parcels for the soldiers. They knitted over 200 pairs of wool socks. Three hundred tins were each filled with 6 lbs. of dates, nuts, raisins, plum puddings, peanut butter, figs, biscuits, coffee, candies, cakes, some smokes, and the socks. They were mailed by November 9. Two days later, the Armistice took effect.