Location of Smithville, ON
The weekend of October 17-18, 2009 was the last weekend of Doors Open 2009 events in Ontario. The boys and I decided to visit the small town of Smithville, which is a small farming community on the upper plateau of the Niagara Escarpment about 12 kilometers south of Grimsby. In Smithville, among the open sites, were the Smithville Train Station and the Smithville Presbyterian Church.
Smithville Train Station
Smithville Train Station
The Smithville Train Station was a typical Doors Open site with guides who explained how the train station served the town well over the years, next to the tracks of the T,H & B (Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo) Railway, later CP Rail.
The station had an attractive circular turret and an interior lovingly restored by the townspeople. It had been moved 50 feet from its previous location, which was directly adjacent to the tracks. Originally, the station had two waiting rooms, one called the Men’s Smoking Room and another for women, children and non-smokers. Each waiting room was heated by a pot-bellied stove.
The station did give the impression as being a special place of transition for the town. Most major arrivals and departures of the town occurred through the train station. It was where soldiers departed to fight in overseas wars and where farmers transported their goods to centres of population. You could imagine how immigrants felt when they hopped off the train at Smithville, to start a new life in the wilds of Canada.
The train station obviously holds great resonance for the town and many have devoted countless hours to its restoration. In the basement several women were busy maintaining the town archives. It was obvious that the people of Smithville were proud of their history and took it seriously.
A frequent lesson derived from attending Doors Open events is that maintaining a link to the past through architecture is a meaningful occupation and pastime for many. It adds meaning to their lives, and as a visitor it adds meaning to our lives as we witness people constructing meaning in theirs.
Smithville Presbyterian Church
Smithville Presbyterian Church
The second site we visited, the Smithville Presbyterian Church turned out to be one of those special Doors Open sites in which we walked out feeling completely satisfied, indeed almost overwhelmed by the experience. With Doors Open, you never know quite what you are going to get and the visit to the Smithville Presbyterian Church was a prime example of this. We went in with no expectations and were rewarded with a rich, yet compact experience.
At the door, several friendly church women greeted us. We then proceeded to a display that honoured the men and boys who had left Smithville to fight in overseas wars. Included was a display of military rifles with fixed bayonets, which greatly impressed the boys.
Later, I spoke with two church elders [meaning, a couple of guys about my age] about the history of the Presbyterian Church, its origins in Scotland and how branches of this Protestant denomination went through a dizzying array of splits, secessions and mergers.
In the 19th century the Presbyterian Church was the most important Protestant denomination in English Canada. Many parts of English Canada were settled by people of Scottish descent. Usually these Scots were Protestants. Scottish Protestants built some very handsome limestone and brick churches in Ontario, like the one in Smithville.
Then we discussed the architectural history of the main Presbyterian churches in nearby Hamilton. There are three important Presbyterian churches in Hamilton: St Paul’s Presbyterian on James St South at Jackson, MacNab Street Presbyterian on MacNab near the train tracks, and the large Central Presbyterian at Charlton and Caroline. Central seems to be the largest of the three and the one most successful in maintaining a healthy congregation. All three are architecturally and culturally significant and are well worth a visit during Doors Open events. The stained glass windows in St Paul’s and MacNab are particularly noteworthy.
An important event, apparently, in Presbyterian Church history, was the formation of the United Church of Church in 1925. The majority of Presbyterians at that time decided to join the new church. But some decided not to join and remained as Presbyterians. It is unclear what sorts of people stayed compared to those who left.
I think it is this aspect that makes the history of the Presbyterian Church in Canada difficult for outsiders to comprehend. Like in many Doors Open events, a glimpse is given of a world you realize you know next to nothing about.
After my discussions with the elders, I had several questions which would have taken them a long time to explain to me adequately:
- How did the Scottish Protestant church relate to the Roman Catholic church at the time of the Reformation–why were the ideas of John Knox or John Calvin so revolutionary at the time?
- What issues of faith and worship inspired factions to break away from established Protestant churches?
- What did the formation of the United Church of Canada mean to the established churches of the time?
- What sorts of Presbyterians decided not to join the United Church of Canada?
I guess what I’m looking for is a book called a Scottish Protestantism in Canada for Dummies that might explain these issues for me.
After my discussion of church history with the elders, which lasted some time, some other women demonstrated the beautiful late-Victorian pipe organ, built by Edward Lye & Sons, which has been in continuous operation since 1891. The boys had a great time working the manual bellows (an electric blower was later installed) and in pounding the keyboard of this organ. Liam was especially impressed by the organ’s foot pedals and how it was possible to play a tune just by using your feet.
Since the organ still has manual bellows it can be played without electrical power–as happened during a concert in the middle of a power outage in 1999. The majestic sound coming from a church organ was impressive. The organ and its lore occupied the boys for a long time and I think it will be something they remember.
Lastly, the event which cemented this visit as being an important event in Doors Open for us (and the last event we attended in 2009) was the free lunch given by the church ladies in the second floor balcony. There, the boys and I could choose from four different types of soup, eat as many sandwiches and dessert squares as we wanted, drink pots of coffee, tea or juice, all for free. There is little that gives a more positive impression for the boys and me than tasty, free food.
At Smithville Presbyterian Church we got to enjoy interesting church history, play with on an historic church organ and then get a full meal at the end of it. This hospitality we found was almost overwhelming. It was an excellent advertisement for small-town Presbyterianism as a purveyor of local history and as a place to find a warm, supportive community.
Despite its cultural attractions, there is a sense that this church community is in decline. Enrolment is declining precipitously in mainstream Protestant churches in Canada. There seems to be a lack of young people required to sustain these communities in the years ahead.
Many potential church-goers are probably happy to visit church buildings and to participate in a supportive community, but lack the Christian faith needed to worship in a Christian church.
But, we didn’t get the impression that the people we met at the Smithville Presbyterian Church were friendly to outsiders because of their possibly declining congregation–we got the impression that this was just the way they behaved.
