LOOKING FOR A SOUL TO SAVE
A longtime haven for downtown’s poor, St. Bart’s faces a new challenge: upscaling
We want to stay and keep doing the traditional outreach that we do and keep worshipping God
On Thursday, Bob Buckland awoke at 3:30 a.m. at his home in the Beaches and drove to St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church, 509 Dundas St. East. At 4:30 a.m., working in the basement kitchen with fellow volunteers, he served breakfast. By 7:30 a.m. they had fed cereal, bacon, eggs, home fries and pancakes, and even lasagna and stir-fry, to 226 people.
“People are hungry enough,” says Mr. Buckland, “that it may be their main meal of the day.”
St. Bart’s, founded on the bank of the Don River at Wilton Avenue (now Dundas) in 1873 and pulled west in 1910 by a team of horses to Parliament Street, has always stood in a poor area, and ministered to Toronto’s needy. A stained glass window honours Sister Teresa, 1891-1988 (and two of her cats); in the depression, the nun started a health clinic in the basement, charging 35¢ per visit, which included medicine.
“Picture a woman, five feet tall, in her habit, in one of those old VW Bugs,” recalls Mr. Buckland, people’s warden here. “She drove into her 90s. We had to stop traffic on Dundas when she left the service.”
Today, St. Bart’s grapples with the one challenge these hardened servants of God have never faced: the neighbourhood is moving upscale.
A white tower crane today dwarfs St. Bart’s. Workers this week put the last windows on the 26-storey Paintbox Condos, east of the old church and, next door, are busy pouring concrete for a 10-storey condo and a Toronto Community Housing rental building.
“We hope that there are Anglicans moving in and that we can attract them,” says Mr. Buckland, as the growl, whine and clang of construction drown him out.
St. Bart’s has weathered tectonic shifts before. Frances Buckland, Mr. Buckland’s mother, grew up in the 1930s on Regent Street in the church’s shadow, where now thrives a community garden. Locals walked down to the bath house at Shuter and Sackville streets for a 5¢ bath.
“We had rats,” she recalls. “We heated with coal. We were poor but we were happy.”
Mrs. Buckland had to move away when the city knocked down her family home. Toronto politicians, determined to clean up slums, demolished the neighbourhood in 1948-57, to build Canada’s largest social housing project: Regent Park, which became a slum of its own. Mrs. Buckland shares the current thinking: that Regent Park was a failure.
Toronto Community Housing, now in charge of the site, agrees, and in 2006 began demolishing the 2,087 rentgeared-to-income units that cover this 30-hectare site. Replacing them are condos and townhouses: the housing company plans to build a total of 4,775 units here by 2017. The new Regent Park draws its inspiration from the success of the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood — which spreads east from St. Lawrence Market — in that it blends private homes sold at market rates with sub- sidized housing. Planners are also recreating the old street grid and adding shops, another feature of the prewar neighbourhood.
Mrs. Buckland is optimistic about the new plan.
“Maybe it will stop some of the thieving and murdering. If they had left the houses then maybe none of it would have happened.”
In 1962, Frances married Francis Buckland at a ceremony at St. Bart’s officiated by his uncle, Charles Frederick Paschner, who was the priest. The couple worships at St. Bart’s to this day.
From St. Bart’s, I walk west and south to The Cathedral Church of St. James, at Church and King Streets, to meet The Very Rev. Douglas A. Stoute, the Dean. He tells me St. James has recently taken St. Bart’s under its wing and introduces me to a member of its congregation, Kevin Kindellan, whom the diocese has appointed as the old church’s volunteer administrator.
Mr. Kindellan, retired from running the Alcan Foil operation for North America, is something of a turnaround specialist. He recently helped revive St. Margaret’s in the Pines, at Lawrence and Morningside avenues in Scarborough.
“Basically we just doubled all the rents and turned a moneylosing into a money-making facility,” he says. “When people began to see that there was hope, they stepped up. That’s the same thing we are trying to do at St. Bart’s.”
The priest at St. Bart’s left in February, so priests from the cathedral come in to perform Sunday service. Now Rev. Stoute plans to send to St. Bart’s some young adult converts to Anglicanism, “looking for an outlet to live out their Christian commitment.”
Back at St. Bart’s, others are finding hope, too. Scott Hunter, a parishioner who cooks breakfast and does maintenance, was among 12 people selected from 99 applicants to work at the Paintbox Bistro, opening in September on this strip.
On Saturday Mr. Hunter and Mr. Buckland will roast jerk chicken for the fun fair here, and next Thursday they will, once again, cook breakfast.
“The breakfast is for a lot of single men from the rooming houses on Jarvis and Sherbourne,” Mr. Buckland says. “The demand will probably be higher next week because the cheques won’t be out yet.”
Worshippers these days are few — perhaps 30 people on Sunday. Still, people come from far afield for St. Barts’ High Anglican service, an ancient ritual involving incense and candles.
“We want to stay and keep doing the traditional outreach that we do and keep worshipping God,” says Mr. Buckland. “We want to keep our smells and bells.”