A (Not So) Brief History of "St. A's"

A (Not So) Brief History of St. Athanasius' Anglican Church, Orillia.

t 3:30 p.m. on Christmas Day, 1927, 42 people gathered for the first public service in St. Athanasius' Chapel on the Fourth Concession (now Westmount Drive). The Rev. J.R.S. Boyd, Rector of St. James' Anglican Church conducted the service.

Leading up to this momentous event, long before 1927, there had been a Sunday School in the West Ward of Orillia that had been established in 1908. It was started in a house on the corner of Mary & McKenzie Streets under the supervision of Dr. C.H. Hale, Superintendent of St. James' Sunday School from 1899-1913. This was a point in time when Orillia was experiencing unprecedented growth, and its Anglican community wished to reach out to the new areas of town. (At the same time another mission Sunday School began in the South Ward, which later grew into our sister church, St. David's.)

Our story dates back even further to 1832 when the Rowe family came over from England to settle at Bass Lake. Basil Rowe, whose farm included the land that is now the Provincial Park, was a stalwart Churchman and a lay member of Synod for thirty years. He was a faithful giver of his tithe (giving a tenth of all he had to God's work), and would even bring every tenth load of wood into town for the poor.

He had to two sons and three daughters; two of whom, Elizabeth and Caroline, came in to town and lived a very secluded life at the top of Tucker's Hill on Coldwater Road. They had a family chapel built for themselves in 1908 which they dedicated to St. Athanasius, but was known to many local citizens as "Little Jimmy", in reference to St. James'. Various Anglican priests came and ministered in their chapel, including those from Price's Corners and the Cowley Fathers in Bracebridge.

In 1927, Miss Elizabeth Rowe died and left the chapel to the Church of England in Canada for use as a Mission, with the understanding that it would continue to be known as St. Athanasius'. Although some doubt was expressed about the appropriateness of doing this, partly due to the enthusiasm of some laymen of St. James, the gift was accepted and the chapel was loaded onto rollers and towed by horses down the Westmount Drive hill to its present site.

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