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The History of our Church
The three denominations that formed the United church in 1925 --
Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational -- have all played a role in
the history of Fairlawn Avenue United Church.
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The earliest branch of the Fairlawn family tree was formed as
Toronto's Second Congregational Church in 1849 by 25 renegade
members of the city's first Congregational church who were opposed to
slavery.
They paid about $650 to purchase a vacant Methodist church on
Hospital Street (now Richmond) between Yonge and Bay, and held services
there until moving into their own new building on the northeast corner
of Dundas (then called Crookshank) and Bond streets in 1863. The
church acquired a new name: Bond Street Congregational Church.
Fifteen years later, the building was replaced with a larger stone
church that stood on the site for 90 years.
The Second Congregational
Church on Hospital Street had been the site of a series of meetings in
1853 held by a group of Presbyterians interested in forming a church to
serve Presbyterians living on the east side of Yonge Street.
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Bond Street Congregational Church |
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St. James Square Presbyterian Church |
Although Presbytery opposed the formation of a second
church, petitioners persisted and succeeded in creating one. It
held services for four years at The Mechanic's Institute at Church and
Adelaide until its new building was ready at the corner of Gould and
Victoria, (now the Ryerson campus). The congregation became
Gould Street Presbyterian Church.
The building was sold to the Catholic Apostolic Church in 1877, but
the congregation continued to hold services there until a new church,
one block north at 42 Gerrard St. East, was completed the following
year. Facing the elegant St. James Square to the south (now
Ryerson's quadrangle), the church became St. James Square
Presbyterian Church. Over the next 45 years, its membership
included two Ontario premiers: Sir Oliver Mowat and George Ross. |
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Meanwhile, in North Toronto, Methodists in the
Yonge-Lawrence area had no church in their immediate neighbourhood.
In the early days of the First World War, a group of 15 Methodist
families who had been meeting in various homes banded together to form
Bedford Park Methodist Church in 1915. Services were held
in the former Bedford Park Hotel on Yonge Street, just south of
Fairlawn, with the minister using a pulpit constructed from the bar that
once served patrons. |
Bedford Park Hotel |
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Fairlawn Methodist Church
White frame Church |
By 1920, the congregation had expanded to 40 families, resulting in the
purchase of the present site at 28 Fairlawn Avenue. Members
constructed a small white frame church on the site of today's church
staff parking lot, and it became Fairlawn Methodist Church.
Within four years, membership quadrupled in size and a brick building,
our present sanctuary, was constructed. |
Then came church union in 1925. The debates leading up to the
amalgamation of the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist
churches were spirited. A meeting held at Massey Hall in 1923
attracted 6,000 people, with most of the overflow attendees forced to
follow the proceedings from nearby churches, including Bond Street
Congregational.
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St. James-Bond United Church |
The two downtown churches became Bond United Church and St.
James Square United Church. The one further north became
Fairlawn United Church.
The year after union, Rev. William McIlroy became the minister at
Bond United and proposed that the congregation relocate to the new
northern suburbs, away from the over-churched downtown. Land was
purchased at 1066 Avenue Road at Willowbank Boulevard, and the first
services were held there in 1928.
By that time, discussions were already underway with St. James Square
United, whose parishioners, too, were heading north and joining other
congregations.
The combined congregations held their first service in
1929 as St. James-Bond United Church in the Avenue Road building
that served members for the next 76 years. |
The church on Fairlawn continued to grow, and in 1933, two wings were
added to each side -- the only feasible expansion possible during the
depression. In 1951, seating was increased to almost 1,000, and
more education space and a new organ were added. It was a decade
in which membership peaked at nearly 2,000 and the Sunday School
enrolment was 950. |
The late 1940s and early 1950s saw church growth elsewhere, too. An
Armour Heights congregation was formed in 1947 in North York, meeting in
the Duke of York Public School, 12 Bannockburn Avenue at Kelso (now
Bannockburn Montessori). Each Sunday, the men of the church would haul
chairs and the pulpit from the basement to the second-floor auditorium.
Two years later, the first services of Armour Heights United Church
were held in the new building, one block north on Kelso at 63 Dunblaine
Avenue.Rapid expansion of the Armour Heights neighbourhood
required an addition in 1951 tat doubled the church's space. A
second addition was built in 1960. |
Armour Heights United Church |
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Wilson Heights United Church |
In 1952, Wilson Heights United Church was formed, with a new
church built within three years at 68 Collinson Boulevard, northwest of
Wilson and Bathurst. In 1968, this congregation merged with Armour
Heights. |
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century, further church mergers began to take place. In 1989,
Armour Heights United joined Fairlawn to create Fairlawn Heights
United Church. Proceeds of the sale of the Armour Heights
building in the early 1990s were used to rebuild the west wing of the
Fairlawn church and create the Fairlawn Neighbourhood Centre in 1996 as
a community outreach project. Then in 2005, St. James-Bond United
joined with the Fairlawn congregation to create Fairlawn Avenue
United Church. Money from the sale of the St. James-Bond
building is being used to support public housing projects in Toronto.
When the United Church was created in 1925, it's doubtful anyone
realized the church on Fairlawn Avenue would eventually come to embrace
the founding denominations of that great experiment!
Fairlawn Avenue United Church |
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