The Church is the People in it

This is a story about memory, and connection, and coming full circle.

When we moved to Verdun from the Plateau Mont Royal in 2007, I didn’t really have any prior connection to this place. I remembered being in Verdun exactly twice before we started house-hunting: once in my twenties when I took the metro to de l’Eglise to visit a friend, and once around 2001, to a dinner party. We came by car and I didn’t really have any idea where I was. Honestly, that was it!

Or so I thought.

As you may have heard, I have been spending a lot of time with old photos and documents these past weeks, putting together an exhibit to commemorate 120 years of the United Church in Verdun.

One of the things that strikes you as you go through this material is just how many people have passed through the doors of the various church buildings over the years. How many, in 120 years? Thousands, certainly. Maybe tens of thousands.  

“Passed through the doors” makes it sound like they came once and that was it. Well, sure, there have been some of those. But for others the church became the centre of their life. This may be particularly true of the early decades when virtually every social activity in the community was connected to a church of one denomination or another. But it’s also true of some people who are still part of our congregation. Faith, and the United Church, certainly loomed large in the lives of Linda Kotovich, Bill Buchanan, Roy Sargent and Iris Allen, all of whom we lost this year.

As I go through old photographs I see lots of people I know, some who have unfortunately passed away since I first came to Southwest in 2010. But of course there are many, many more that I never met. It’s a strange experience to see and start to recognize the same faces over a span of years, smiling at Wednesday lunches and Epiphany potlucks, rummage sales and penny fairs, anniversary dinners and Holly Teas, barbecues and musical revues!

I wish I had known them all. I wish they could all come back for one night to swap stories.

In a way, that’s what we’re trying to make happen with this exhibit. Hopefully, people will come, and look, and delight to see old friends in pictures, and reminisce about times past. As the invitation to our All Saints Memorial service this Sunday says, quoting Terry Pratchett, “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”

I have learned a great deal about my church’s history, and Verdun’s history  in these past weeks, and there is so much more to learn. There has been some detective work trying to identify people and places, and a number of people have been helping me fill in blanks. I hope this will continue through the holiday season as the pictures are on display. I hope people will come to me and say, “I know who that is” or even “You got that wrong”!

As I said, I didn’t think I had any personal connection to Verdun or this church going back much more than a decade. Then I made a two-part discovery.

First, on reading through the “little red book” – the commemorative booklet Crawford Park United Church 1947-1997: 50 Years of Memories, I discovered that my grandfather the Rev. Ernest Barratt, had been supply minister at Crawford in 1979-1980, in between Rev. Corbett and Rev. Nerny.

My grandfather was retired by that time, but he and my grandmother, Winnie, were living on Bishop-Power in LaSalle, so it makes sense. I was a teenager myself and typically not so interested in what my parents or grandparents were up to. I have been wracking my brain ever since, though, wondering if I might have attended a service at 1445 Clemenceau forty years ago!

The second part of my discovery? A picture of my grandparents showed up, dated 1980. At first I thought it was taken in their apartment, but as I looked at other photos taken in the church at around that time, I realized they are in fact standing on the stage in the hall, exactly where our office is now, exactly where I am sitting, putting together this exhibit.

It’s a little eerie, maybe, but it also makes me happy. My personal connection to Verdun, and to the United Church, is new, despite this family history. The church has grown and changed in ways my grandparents couldn’t have imagined and probably wouldn’t have approved of! Still, finding this picture makes me feel closer to these two people who have been gone over 30 years now. It also makes me feel like I’m right where I’m meant to be.

-Amy

We hope you’ll join us this Sunday, Nov. 3rd at 10am for our All Saints Memorial service

The exhibit, 120 Years, will be up as of Friday, Nov. 15th. You are invited to come by for wine and cheese from 4 to 6PM. It will remain in place through the holiday season.