For Canadian Anglican historians and friends
Dear colleagues and friends,
I’m writing you on behalf of the executive of the Canadian Church Historical Society to update you on some of our activities and planning, and to bring to your attention a few opportunities for historical conversations.
Executive
The CCHS now functions as a committee of General Synod. The members of our executive are:
• (President) Bill Acres, a professor of history at Huron College and Western University;
• (Vice-president) Andrew Rampton, a parish priest in the diocese of Niagara and a historian of church music, saints, and liturgy;
• (Secretary) Susan Glover, a professor emerita at Laurentian University;
• (Treasurer) Laurel Parson, the General Synod archivist;
• (Journal editor ex officio) Thomas Power, a professor emeritus at Wycliffe College;
• (Members-at-large) Daniel Graves, the past editor of our Journal, and a parish priest in the diocese of Toronto; and Alan Hayes, a professor emeritus at Wycliffe College.
Our liaison member to the Council of General Synod is Susan Bell, the bishop of Niagara, and a historian specializing in George Herbert and the early Stuart Church of England.
Our “MRI" conference
A year ago, many of us attended a conference at St. Paul’s, Bloor Street, Toronto, on the Anglican Congress of 1963 and its key missiological document “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the body of Christ.” Many of us were pretty impressed with the broad international interest that this conference generated, and with the quality of the papers.
In the next few weeks the next issue of our Journal will publish nine articles that began as presentations at that conference. It also includes a warm tribute to Bishop Terry Brown, who was the driving force behind the conference, and who tragically died just a few days before it began. If you’re a JCCHS subscriber, you’ll receive it soon; if you aren’t, individual copies are available for $25 plus shipping from Laurel at archives@national.anglican.ca.
Anglican and Episcopal History, the journal of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, will be publishing enlarged versions of some of the other papers from the conference.
A conference on mission
We’re planning a conference on Anglican missions, similar in format to the “MRI” conference, for May 2026 at Huron College. We’ll be sending you information about it, and a “Call for Papers," as our planning progresses. The period covered by the conference will extend from the founding of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1701 to the immediate aftermath of the Anglican Congress of 1963. Examples of some of the themes that we expect might be addresses are the work of Church of England mission societies in Canada, colonial America, and elsewhere; the formation and evolution of Episcopal Church, Canadian Anglican, and other national mission societies; Company missions (e.g., Hudson’s Bay, New England Company, Canada Company); missions, imperialism, colonialism; cooperation and conflict between different Anglican mission societies and missionaries; mssionary literature, translations of texts, and readerships; theologies, theories, and practices of missionary work.
General Synod
We’ll have a booth at General Synod next month in the London Convention Centre. If you’re a delegate or observer, we’ll hope to see you there! Copies of some issues of our Journal will be available.
The Mohawk Institute
A special issue of the Journal devoted entirely to this influential and notorious Indian residential school in Brantford, Ontario, was published last year. The Mohawk Institute began as a casually administered, predominantly pastoral Anglican mission school, but in 1872 it was remade as an authoritarian, assimilationist vocational school under Unitarian influence. This special issue includes journals and reports of the principal who took over the school in 1872, and his wife’s diary, edited by Bill Acres, as well as a thorough introduction by Bill, drawing on documents that were guarded from public access before 2012. If you aren’t a subscriber, single copies are available from Laurel at archives@national.anglican.ca for $25 plus shipping.
Book launches
The Mohawk Institute issue of the Journal really takes the form of a book, and we've wanted to celebrate it with a book launch. A book launch at General Synod will take place at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 27. We’ll also have a book launch intended for people that aren’t involved in General Synod, which will take place that same evening at 7:30 at Chaucer’s Pub, 122 Carling St., London, Ontario. There will be free refreshments and a cash bar.
Other conferences: (1) at “Congress”; (2) George Herbert
The Canadian Society of Church History, a primarily Protestant ecumenical group, and the Canadian Catholic Historical Association, are holding their annual meetings from June 2 to 4 at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at George Brown College, Toronto; registration is at https://www.federationhss.ca/en/congress/register. The CSCH meets from June 2 to 4; the CCHA meets on June 4 and 5. The papers represented at these conferences reflect some excellent current scholarship in Canadian Christian history.
The annual meeting of the George Herbert Society meets at different international locations every year; it happens that this year it’s taking place in Toronto: at Trinity College, from June 19 to 22. It features three outstanding plenary speakers as well as panels, special worship, a rare books exhibition, a choral concert, and a concluding roundtable. Registration information is at https://georgeherbertsociety.org/university-of-toronto-seventh-triennial-conference-2025/.
Writing parish histories
In case you aren’t already aware, in 2023 the CCHS commissioned a booklet on writing a parish history, and we’re extremely pleased with the result. Thomas Power wrote it, and it’s available on-line (free!) at https://www.anglican.ca/wp-content/uploads/Guide-for-writing-a-parish-history-1.pdf.
William Westfall tribute
Bill, who died in 2023, was a brilliant and much beloved historian at York University and Trinity College, known particularly for (among a great many publications) his Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario. He also mentored a number of church historians and historical scholars in our current generation. Our Journal will be publishing an issue with articles related to his important historical contributions written by his students and colleagues. The guest editors for this issue, still in preparation, are Bruce Douville of Algoma University and Todd Webb of Laurentian University.
Archives
When the offices of General Synod move to 300 Bloor Street West, Toronto, which is targeted to happen next spring, the General Synod Archives will move too. This is obviously a huge operation for Laurel, and our CCHS executive meetings now include the question, “How are you, Laurel?”
Since historians work in archives, and archivists have to be historians too, our CCHS executive has been wondering if we should be doing more to bring historians and archivists together. One idea is to look for inspiration to the model in the Episcopal Church of the organization called “National Episcopal Historians and Archivists,” which holds training events and social occasions, and publishes a newsletter. We’d be glad to hear your thoughts.
Finances
Our operating fund balance and investment fund are healthy, but our annual budget has been running a deficit. A major reason is a reduction in institutional subscriptions, which we’re pretty sure has happened because a number of universities that formerly paid us for subscriptions to the Journal now receive it through aggregate electronic databases. The Journal does of course get copyright income from the database aggregators, but that doesn’t show up in the CCHS budget.
We’d very much like to increase our individual CCHS memberships. If you’re not a member, we’d be glad for you to become one; the cost is $30 a year, and there’s a membership form at https://www.anglican.ca/archives/incanada/cchs/memberships/. If you’re already a member, we’d be glad for you to recommend us to others! We also very much appreciate donations.
Other historical work connected with CCHS members
· Dan Graves is co-editor of Richard Hooker and the Christian Virtues (Brill, 2024).
Bill Acres has a chapter in Behind the Bricks, a history of the Mohawk Institute, forthcoming (September 2025) from University of Calgary Press.
Susan Glover is a member of a research team focusing on Indigenous writing in what is now Canada before 1992.
My “Canada’s Indian Day Schools: The Case of Massett, Haida Gwaii, 1909–1924” is about to be published by the Canadian Society of Church History.
Andrew Rampton is part of a group, connected to the national Church’s committee on Faith, Worship, Ministry, which is reviewing our calendar of saints and commemorations.
If you’d like to share news of your own historical work, please let me know!
Sincerely,
Alan
Alan L. Hayes,
For the Executive Committee, CCHS
I've just joined and am deciding if I can make the May 2026 conference - and just received the issue of the Journal with Bill Westall's picture on the cover. He was the outside examiner for my PhD dissertation back in 1999.