Calvary United Church building to get third life as daycare centre, event space

For more than 100 years, from its construction as a Methodist church in 1877 until its last service in 2014, Calvary United Church in Sutton was a community hub and a place of worship. In 2014, local artist Brigite Normandin and her partner Peter Reindler bought the building and turned it into a workshop and art gallery, Galerie Art Plus.

On April 2, Normandin announced that she planned to close the gallery. The church building has been bought by the Town of Sutton, which plans to use the ground floor for a community daycare and the upper floor for an exhibition space.

Normandin said she and Reindler “fell in love” with the church building when they visited it before buying it in 2013, and always felt they were the “temporary guardians” of the place.

“I wanted to have an art gallery in the chapel…and produce [shows by] local artists, and use the upper floor as my workshop,” Normandin said. The gallery went on to host a succession of shows by local contemporary artists. In recent months, Normandin said she struggled to balance the responsibilities of being a professional artist, gallery owner and caregiver to family members. “I spent the last 10 years taking care of the artists, and now I need to take care of me,” she said. “When the town showed an interest in buying the church, I thought, ‘Yes, they’ll be able to keep making it shine.’ That made it an easier decision, but I was brokenhearted all the same.”

Normandin said she hoped the exhibition space, now in the hands of the municipality, would “continue to promote arts and culture in the area and in the life of Sutton and the Townships.”

Sutton Mayor Robert Benoit confirmed the city had bought the church building, the value of which he estimated at $750,000, from

Normandin and Reindler for $425,000, with the formal handover planned for May 15. “Ideally, we want the building to be used 365 days a year,” he said. The ground floor was slated to be the new home of the community daycare centre, the Jardin d’enfants de Sutton, currently at the aging Centre Communautaire John-sleeth. The upper floor is expected to become a community hall, a multipurpose event space and “a place to spread the visual arts,” continuing the legacy of Galerie Art Plus. Arts Sutton, also currently based at the Centre Johnsleeth, may hold activities there, Benoit said.

Benoit said the church in the village centre was “part of Sutton’s brand.”

“We didn’t want it to become a bed-and-breakfast or a bitcoin [mining centre] or any of the other scenarios you can imagine if it went on the private market,” he said. “It’s a magnificent place and we absolutely need to keep it accessible to the public.”

Benoit said the municipality had done a “review” of the building several years ago, and estimated that it needed about $250,000 in repairs and upgrades before the daycare centre could be moved there. He said the repairs would be financed by the proceeds from the recent sale of some land in the Mont-sutton area to the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Benoit said the daycare centre could be moved from the Centre Johnsleeth to the church building as early as September.