St. Anne’s Anglican Church was a place of unique significance – but now much of it is gone

St. Anne’s Anglican Church was a place of unique significance. And now it is largely gone. A fire early Sunday devastated the national historic site in Toronto, consuming decorative paintings by members of the Group of Seven and leaving much of the building in ashes.

“It’s a catastrophe for Canadian architecture, Canadian art and Canadian heritage,” the Concordia University architectural historian Peter Coffman said. “This was a unique building that could only have happened in Canada.”

While the cause of the fire is still unknown, the loss of St. Anne’s reflects widespread challenges for Canadian heritage sites and particularly churches. Social and demographic changes have left many such structures underused and in poor condition, while government funding for their maintenance is scarce.

That lack of resources would not have surprised J.E.H. MacDonald. “Canada seemingly gets her walls painted, but not decorated,” the artist and Group of Seven member wrote in a 1925 article about St. Anne’s. “Giotto would be out of work among us, and Michelangelo would move from Toronto to New York.”

St. Anne’s proved to be an unlikely exception.

The Anglican congregation was established in what was the village of Brockton in 1862. By 1907, the fast-growing church held a design competition for a new building; the winner was architect William Ford Howland, with a plan in the neo-Byzantine style. In 1908, it was completed with a modest exterior mostly of yellow brick. A pair of towers flanked its three arched doorways and five recessed stilted arches.

Yet Howland’s design was a bold choice by Reverend Lawrence Skey. “For the Anglican Church in Canada of the time, it was spectacularly radical,” said Prof. Coffman, author of a paper on the church’s history. The Anglican house style was Gothic; most Anglican churches were accordingly long, tall, ornate and carried an air of medieval England.

This one was modelled after the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. A 17-metre-wide, 21-metre-tall dome formed the centre of the building; here the reverend could make eye contact with the congregants while he delivered his sermon. “This was a church as a forum,” Prof. Coffman said. “Skey was explicitly turning his back on two generations of church building,” rejecting Gothic frippery and the “high church” emphasis on ritual.

St. Anne’s at first was almost without decoration, but in 1923, Skey raised the funds to hire architect William Rae and the artist J.E.H. MacDonald. MacDonald was another rebellious choice: A commercial artist and a member of the newly formed Group of Seven, he had no experience with religious art. (Skey had probably met MacDonald drinking at the Arts and Letters Club where they were both members.)

MacDonald led nine other artists including the Group’s Franklin Carmichael and Frederick Varley, as well as MacDonald’s 18-year-old son, Thoreau. They painted an elaborate array of symbolic ornaments on a field of aquamarine and gold, and frescoes drawing from Byzantine and Renaissance Christian art.

Varley painted images of Old Testament prophets into the cornices of the dome, which collapsed during the fire. He also painted the Nativity, depicting himself as a shepherd, while MacDonald painted the Crucifixion on one of the pendentives, the triangular elements where the dome intersected with the column. MacDonald also commissioned Toronto sculptors Florence Wyle and Frances Loring to contribute reliefs of the four apostles.

Skey’s congregants were largely working class; some would have laboured at the Cadbury chocolate factory across the street, which then as now towered over the church. Inside the dome, they now could look up and read a passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Sarah Milroy, director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont., recalls the church as a cozy space with the murals painted in a relatively informal style that evoked the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, which aspired to bring beauty to everyday life. “I remember the extraordinary warmth and congeniality of the space,” she said. “It was a real Arts and Crafts gem, one of the most important cultural sites in Toronto.”

A 1937 article in The Globe and Mail called St. Anne’s “one of the most beautiful in Canada.” A further round of renovations in the 1960s added Byzantine-themed mosaics. However, the congregation declined rapidly in size and influence. Its neighbourhood in what was now central Toronto became increasingly Catholic and less religious. By 2000, the congregation had fewer than 100 members and was hosting a fundraiser to repair problems with the roof and structure.

The situation remained difficult in recent years. The church’s parish hall, located behind the sanctuary, was rented out for many cultural events, and in 2022, the church sought permission to separate that building from the rest of the property with an eye to selling it.

Diane Chin, chair of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, said that many churches find themselves in similar circumstances, and will need to remake their facilities “as hubs for the community.” “Bringing in cultural events, seniors’ activities, feeding the homeless – I think that’s how churches can succeed in their reinvention and restoration,” she said.

The United Church of Canada is collaborating with a development organization, Kindred Works, on dozens of such projects; the Trinity Centres Foundation also advises faith communities on repurposing their buildings.

However, straightforward maintenance and restoration of buildings remain the responsibility of individual organizations. Some provinces provide tax credits or grant programs to support such work; in Ontario there are few, and in Toronto, they apply only to commercial and industrial properties. Ms. Chin said the ACO is lobbying for such programs to be expanded.

It is unclear for now whether such programs would have kept St. Anne’s intact, along with the art within – the only religious works by some of Canada’s most significant artists. But there may be an opportunity to test Canada’s resources for heritage restoration. On Sunday, both Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and the church’s current rector, Father Don Beyers, vowed to rebuild the structure.

But Prof. Coffman doubted it could be the same saying, “It really is irreplaceable. It’s a testament to how fragile our most important heritage can be.”

With a report from Kate Taylor