DEAR CCHS MEMBERS AND FRIENDS,
Here’s an update on the Canadian Church Historical Society since our Newsletter #3 in April.
OUR ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
This will take place via Zoom on Friday, October 23, at 7 p.m. We’re planning a relatively painless business meeting, and a very interesting speaker. It’s also an opportunity for us all to see one another at one time and say hello. We’ll send more details in a few weeks. Please save the date!
If you’re not a member, and would like to become one, we’d be glad to welcome you! Visit
https://www.anglican.ca/archives/cchs/membership/.
OUR RECENT HISTORY CONFERENCE (MAY 29-30)
Our conference on mission history, 1701–1965, was quite successful. We heard eight excellent papers by senior, mid-career, and emergent scholars, followed by engaged discussion. We also had an inspiring keynote address from The Ven. Rosalyn Kantlahtant Elm, coordinator in the Indigenous Ministries department of the Anglican Church of Canada (and, since July 1, Director of the Office of Sacred Circle). The topics of the papers were: —
Justin Bilby, a missionary to the Inuit who caused trouble for both the Church Missionary Society and the commercial whaling establishment;
James Settee, a Cree missionary who was disdained by his white colleagues;
three generations of a sometimes-Anglican Anishnaabe family in what’s now the Kenora district, who were the ancestors of our speaker;
some of the fiscal shenanigans that transferred land from Mohawks to settlers at Six Nations;
the diverse historical interpretations of Henry Budd, Sr., the first Indigenous person to be ordained an Anglican priest in North America;
the efforts, and failures, of Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionaries to Anglicanize the area around Digby, Nova Scotia;
the wide-ranging ministry of the women who served as Bishop’s Messengers in the diocese of Brandon, before the Anglican Church began ordaining women; and
the problematic role of the Women’s Auxiliary in parts of British Columbia in supporting Indian residential schools.
Bishop Susan Bell, our liaison to the Council of General Synod, and a historian in her own right, introduced the program with some insightful reflections. Huron University College provided splendid hospitality, a comfortable meeting space, and facilities for video streaming.
The presenters have been transforming their twenty-minute presentations into 7000-word articles for publication in our Journal. As I write this, six of these articles have been submitted and edited, and they are top-notch. This special issue of the Journal should be available in a few months.
LAUREL PARSON’S RETIREMENT
Probably everyone receiving this knows that Laurel has been the Archivist of General Synod since 2019. She had served on the Archives staff for many years before that, as well. It’s a demanding and underappreciated position!
As Canadian Anglican historians, we know how crucial this position is for our own work; and many others, both in General Synod and in the wider public, have depended on Laurel. If you’ve used the archives, you will have experienced how incredibly knowledgeable, helpful, and committed she always is. She has been The Compleat Archivist, with a wide array of professional skills, notably fastidiously accurate and reliable records management, as well as an encyclopedic knowledge of denominational structures and history, common sense, and a keen spirit of service.
One of the umpteen ways that Laurel has contributed to the life of the Church has been as the staff person for the CCHS: managing accounts, supporting the Journal, offering hospitality at meetings, helping to organize our conferences, taking minutes, liaising to other parts of the Church, managing some of our public relations, representing the Society at our booth at General Synod and elsewhere, gathering information for us, offering expertise. It’s no exaggeration to say that we literally wouldn’t have been able to manage all the things that we do without her.
Laurel will be retiring at the end of August. Thank you, Laurel, from all of us, from all our hearts. We pray God’s rich blessing on your retirement.
INTRODUCING KATHERINE JONES
Katherine has been contracted to oversee the Archives when Laurel leaves; she has already been assisting there. She has a BA in anthropology, and a Master’s of Information Studies from the University of Toronto. After her MISt, she worked in records management at private and government organizations for about ten years, until the pandemic lockdowns. She then worked as a digital archivist for the United Church of Canada General Council from 2022 to 2024, and since then has served as Project Archivist for our General Synod Archives. She has been a member of the Anglican Church since 1983, and has been singing in Anglican church choirs since the age of seven (maybe longer! — she’s not sure). In fact, she sings semi-professionally. The CCHS executive met her recently. We have great confidence in her!
THE JOURNAL
Volume LXII for 2025 has been mailed to subscribers in the past couple of weeks. It includes three articles:
Alan L. Hayes. Writing a Decolonial History of Anglican Christianity in North America: Urgencies, Challenges, and Canadian Precedents
Hannah Wygiera. Confronting the Past in Faith: Black Christians in the Maritimes, 1780-1850
Rebekah Wade. ‘Come Hell or High Water’: Religious Language and the Halifax Explosion.
It also includes two book reviews and a tribute to our late committee member, Richard Virr.
As always, our Journal editor Thomas Power, encourages your submission! Style guidelines are on our website:
https://cchso.ca/about-the-journal
STUDIES IN ANGLICAN HISTORY
This new publishing venture has just been launched by the CCHS. It will bring groundbreaking scholarship and promote innovative approaches for the study of Anglican church history. Not only specifically Canadian topics but also themes of global interest, such as modernity, mission, decolonization, and Indigenous culture, and the place of the Anglican Church worldwide, will be included.
The first volumes in the series will include papers delivered at our CCHS conferences. In addition, proposals for monograph titles are invited. The series will be of interest to students of all levels, and to scholars and teachers in Anglican history, the history of Christianity, and cultural studies.
The series will be published by Wipf and Stock, Eugene, Oregon. We’re grateful to Thomas Power for spearheading this project, and for agreeing to serve as its general editor.
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY SOCIETY
We’re establishing contact with the Ecclesiastical History Society (
https://ecclesiasticalhistorysociety.com
) based in England. We’re identifying areas of mutual interest; and looking at ways for cooperation, such as virtual groups, common reading, and topical discussions. If this is something that interests you, please be in touch with Thomas Power (thomas.power@utoronto.ca) who is coordinating this initiative.
MRI@60 ON-LINE ARCHIVES
Our historical conference in 2024 commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of the Anglican Congress of August 1963 in Toronto, and in particular its most noted document, “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in Christ”. We have now devoted part of our website to a wealth of archival materials associated with that event: you’ll find it at https://cchso.ca/mri-at-60. You’ll find there six sections from which to choose:
Documents, with three sub-sections, includes (1) the delegates list, the text of the opening sermon by Archbishop Ramsey, and an updated bibliography; (2) a day-by-day report on the Congress; (3) links to the text of the Congress proceedings edited by Eugene Fairweather of Trinity College, Toronto (you’ll have to register at the Internet Archive), and a 1987 Master’s thesis on the Congress.
The Videos section includes a recording of the Festival of Anglican Church Music, Toronto, 1963, sung by two choirs; and a video entitled “Re-Birth of a Church,” a report of the Congress narrated by Stephen Bayne, the Executive Officer of the Anglican Communion at the time.
The Audio section has recordings (originally released on a double-sided LP) of sermons, services, music, and ambient sounds from the Congress.
The Images section has a selection of images from the Congress.
The Abstracts section includes abstracts of papers that were presented at our 2024 conference. Many of these papers were published either in our Journal in 2025, while others appeared in Anglican and Episcopal History for March 2026 (listed at https://hsec.us/news/13617952).
The Timetable of our 2024 conference.
THE MILLMAN PRIZE
This prize of $500.00 is awarded by the CCHS for the best essay (in English or French) in Canadian church history by a graduate student enrolled at a Canadian university. The funding for this award is made possible by the Thomas R. Millman Endowment Fund. All essays submitted are considered for possible publication in our CCHS Journal. The deadline for submissions for the prize in 2026 is August 31. Full details are available at https://cchso.ca/the-millman-prize-essay-contest-2026.
If you’re not a graduate student yourself, please think of someone who is, and pass on the word!
The most recent recipient of the prize is Hannah Wygiera, PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Calgary. Her essay entitled “Confronting the Past in Faith: Black Christians in the Maritimes, 1780–1850” is included in the most recent issue of our Journal.
ONE OF OUR MEMBERS
Please join me, virtually, in saluting a long-time member of CCHS on his (so-called) retirement! I’m personally much indebted to the historical contributions of Harry Huskins.
Harry has contributed richly to the history of Canadian Anglicanism with, first of all, several outstanding theses: “The Anglican Church in Algoma in the Nineteenth Century” (MA), “The autonomy of the Canadian Church within the Anglican Communion: an historical study” (LLM), and “The Idea of the National Church in Anglicanism: The Canadian Experience” (ThD). He has also published several articles, including in our own Journal.
That said, he is probably better known among most Anglicans for his able service in church administration, most notably as executive officer for the diocese of Algoma, the diocese of Moosonee, and the ecclesiastical province of Ontario, and also as deputy prolocutor and then prolocutor of General Synod. He has also served as administrator or director for the Shingwauk Education Trust (which holds various assets of the old Shingwauk Indian residential school) and Shingwauk University (an Indigenous degree-granting school). And many years ago he was a most helpful member of our CCHS executive, not least as we moved towards legal incorporation. Harry is always one of my examples for my theory that historians tend to make great administrators: studying how institutions have worked in the past, or why they haven’t, is quite useful training for managing things in the present.
Harry has now retired from administration (sort of — he keeps taking on new things) and has thrown himself into an ambitious new collaborative historical project, a history of the Métis Nation of Ontario. The project involves video interviews with Métis leaders, leading to the writing of a major book. Independently of that project, he has already written a history of Métis in Sault Ste Marie, a key crossroads of the Great Lakes region; this work is at the printers’.
Canadian Church Historical Society
Contact:
Katherine Jones
archives@national.anglican.caWebsite:
https://cchso.ca/
AN INVITATION
If you know of any historical research, in progress or recently completed, relating to the Anglican Church of Canada, — perhaps something you’re involved with yourself! — please let me know so that I can share the information in future newsletters.
Grace and peace,
Alan
Alan L. Hayes
For the Executive Committee, CCHS