Embroidering amends, 40 years later
For over a decade, Anna Dohler has been stitching together a donation she never made to the Holy Trinity church in 1977
It’s been nearly half a century since 78-year-old Anna Dohler walked away from the Church of the Holy Trinity, and she’s still stitching together the pieces. Hunkered down in the nave at Trinity Square, Dohler’s hands are careful and slow. A swath of blue wool follows her needle as it moves up and down. The stitch is a form of bargello, she explains, called Hungarian Point. By nature, the stitch looks like flames. How apt for Dohler. For more than a decade, she’s sat in the church twice a month, stitching a seven-foot sidepiece, a two-foot sidepiece and an intricate vestment. Each bears the image of the Pente- cost — or the Holy Spirit, descending in flames. To her, the pieces are making up for a donation she never gave, after fire charred the church in 1977.
“Those three windows were blown out,” Dohler said, gesturing to the now-replaced stained glass on the south wall. She waved her hand over to the west side.
“They had taken the window out here, knowing that there was something going on.”
The fire originated at Eaton’s, and caused substantial damage to the south side of the church and the original ceiling. Dohler had been a member of the parish since “the July first weekend of 1972,” and was working at the time for the Toronto Historical Board.
After the fire, she asked to come and take photographs of the church, but was denied. She asked to write a story about the church’s history, and put up a display, and was denied again. With tensions high, an argument arose between her and the minister.
“Which is why I left the church,” she recalled. While other members of Trinity’s congregation donated money so the church could remedy the fire damage, Dohler never made a monetary donation after the argument.
“I didn’t give my money,” she said. “But when I left, I promised myself that I was going to do something.”
For decades, it was always in the back of Dohler’s mind. Then, in 2003, she walked back into the church for the first time — and knew what she wanted to do.
“Do you have any season that you don’t have the frontal for?” she asked. A frontal is used as a covering for the face of an altar, or as hangings on the sides. They are typically created to celebrate a season of the church year.
As it turns out, the church was missing the frontal for the Pentecost. Faced with creating an image of flames, Dohler knew it was the right choice. Since that day, she’s been stitching. Over $1,500 has gone into wool in the right colours and textures — far more money than she’d have given to the church back in 1977. “These are the only colours that I’m using,” she said, sweeping her hand over the table where she keeps her work. “Blue and red, orange and yellow. But these are three different kinds of yellow, you see?”
The colours seem to blend into one another, warm and bright. Each is hemmed in by an edging of blue. “The blue is the deciding factor on the flame,” she nodded, pulling at a new stitch. “I’m afraid I’ve made a few mistakes, but to err is human, they say.”
As years spin on, the process has become slow. Dohler requires the aid of a wheelchair, for cerebral palsy she was diagnosed with in childhood. There also isn’t enough space in her home to work on such a large piece, she said.
“I have to do it here,” she said of the church. “I only come twice a month. It takes six hours to do one colour all the way across, without interruptions.”
Her original plan was to finish the pieces by 2014. Now, she joked, the finish line may be closer to 2027. No matter how long it takes, Dohler keeps stitching away. One colour at a time, one line at a time, one day at a time.
“People came and helped the day of the fire,” she recalled. “But this way, this is something that the church will put up . . . a memory.”