Family’s memorial window finds new home at Grey Nuns Hospital
Stained-glass piece crafted in memory of late grandmother salvaged from church
A treasured stained-glass window from a shuttered church has found a new home at the Grey Nuns Community Hospital in southeast Edmonton.
Hospital officials unveiled the window in their front foyer Wednesday morning and rededicated it to the family that donated it nearly 40 years ago to the Knox-Metropolitan United Church.
When Catherine Watson and her brother, Scott, were teenagers, their family had the window made in honour of their grandmother, who died in 1974.
Margaret MacFie Watson (18901974) hailed from Dumbarton, Scotland, a shipping town near Glasgow. She moved to Canada in her 20s in search of better opportunities for her young family. She settled in Strathcona, where her husband, Douglas — a contractor — built a house that still stands today.
Douglas fought in the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April, 1917, and was wounded during the Battle of Passchendaele later that year.
“When he was away at war, she spent all of her time down at Knox-Metropolitan baking and preparing meals for people and assisting however she could,” said Scott Watson, her grandson.
“She held her family together,” Catherine added.
They remember her great cooking and her firm but social personality. The family had a deep connection with the church. Douglas sang in the choir with his daughter and Margaret helped out often with church sales and cooking.
After she died at age 84, family members continued to visit the church and gaze upon the stainedglass window they had installed in her memory.
The striking window has a golden cross with swirls of green, blue and purple glass representing a mother and child.
With a shrinking congregation and mounting repairs needed on the 109 Street building, Knox-Metropolitan decided to merge with three other local churches and move into Avonmore United’s building at 7909 82 Ave. The building was renamed United on Whyte.
Susan Bramm of Knox-Metropolitan found new homes for the church’s many stained-glass windows and other objects of faith. She was the one who approached the hospital about the Watson window.
The Grey Nuns has a busy maternity ward, which seemed a good thematic fit, but after considering that location and a few others, the hospital’s facilities management team opted for a more visible spot in the hospital’s main entrance. Fittingly, the hospital has significance for the Watson family. Scott’s three sons were born there and his mother spent her last days there in palliative care.
Brenda Malkinson, the artist who made the window many years ago, was in attendance for the unveiling on Wednesday. The piece was her first church window commission and helped launch her career in glass art.
She worked on the window in a third-floor studio at the former City Centre Airport hangar when she was in her 20s. And she went on to make more than a dozen stained-glass windows for the church.
“To come back and see it in a modern context is very exciting,” she said. “I don’t know how to say how much this means.”