Celebrating 130 Years of Ministry
in West Kootenay

July 12, 1892 - July 12, 2022

​In July, concurrent with Canada’s 150 Anniversary, Kootenay Anglicans celebrated the 125th Anniversary of the founding of the Parish of Kootenay, now Kokanee, and the opening of the first Anglican Church buildings for public worship in both Nelson and Balfour. By the turn of the 20th century, St.Saviour’s Pro-Cathedral was probably the dominant church in Nelson but it’s beginnings during the previous decade were more humble.
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In 1890, Bishop A.W. Sillitoe of New Westminster, accompanied by his wife Violet, had paid a visit to the settlement of Nelson, riding on horseback from Sproat’s Landing over a trail which Mrs. Sillitoe described as very rough and difficult. The journey took ten hours to cover a distance of 28 miles. The July 19, 1890 Miner announced that “Church of England services will be held tomorrow, Sunday July 20, in Topping’s building, Baker Street, at 10:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. The Bishop of New Westminster will officiate.” The Bishop later referred to the congregations on that Sunday as “excellent in the morning” and “overflowing in the evening!” The Bishop’s wife played the organ which had been borrowed from a local saloon.

Bishop A.W. Sillitoe

​In May 1892, the Bishop again visited Nelson, this time for the purpose of organizing the Parish. A meeting was held in the Oddfellows Hall during which a decision was made to proceed without delay in the building of a Mission Room which might be used for services and other parochial purposes. The June 18, 1892 Miner reported that “the frame of the new English Church (Mission Room) is up”. This was a shingled frame building, which had been erected on the present St. Saviour’s Church site, containing 70 chairs, with room for 40 more,  and was used as a reading room and meeting hall during the week. On Sunday July 12, 1892, the opening services of the Parish were held in the Mission Room under the direction of the first missionary priest-in-charge, Rev. A.J. Reid. The Miner reported this on July 23, “the new Church of England building was opened last Sunday morning.” By October 1892, it boasted an organ purchased with funds raised by the Church Ladies’ Guild.
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Mission Room c.1900

Interior Mission Room

By 1892, the West Arm of Kootenay Lake was dotted with many settlements in need of the visitation of clergy. On May 14, 1892, Bishop Sillitoe, accompanied by Rev. Reid visited and personally selected the site for St. Michael and All Angels Church in Balfour, the property being donated by Charles W. Busk, who had pre-empted the town site of Balfour in 1889. The first church service was held on May 26 in Busk’s store with a congregation of 16.

​Rev. Reid then held the first service in the unfinished church on December 26, 1892. Rev. Reid had previously performed the first service in Kaslo on May 30, and this was followed by the building of St. Mark’s, Kaslo, in 1895. Other smaller outlying churches followed:- All Souls at Proctor, All Saints at Long Beach, St. Francis in-the-Woods at Queens Bay, St.Mathew’s at South Slocan (1914) and St. Andrew’s by-the-Lake at Willow Point (1912).

Rev. A.J. Reid

Rev. Reid stated in September 1892 that “My time is largely spent travelling through the district, chiefly by steamer, and holding services on Sundays and weekdays wherever I can. Sometimes in barns dignified by the name of a hall, as in Ainsworth, sometimes (in) the comfortable parlour of a miner’s boarding house belonging to the Pilot Bay Smelting Company, and sometimes in the union meetinghouse built of rough boards in Kaslo.

​The best I can do is to keep a few church people together and to encourage them to hope for a time when each camp or city will have a consecrated church served by a resident priest. Indeed, one’s chief work seems to be that of nursing some six or seven infant congregations. Our biggest infant, just out of long clothes, is Nelson.” To give an idea of the area served by Rev Reid consider that in August 29, 1892, the new Missionary District was established to include the area commencing at Nakusp, following South through the Slocan District, the Kootenay River to Nelson, the West Arm, and both sides of the Kootenay Lake as far as the International Border with the United States. This was in addition to his duties at St. Saviour’s, the central Church of the District.

Map of Rural Deanery of Nelson
Drawn by Rev. A.J. Reid 1911

​Rev. Reid was succeeded in 1893 by Rev. H.S. Akehurst who, in 1896, spearheaded steps for the construction of a more permanent church in Nelson, with the cornerstone of today’s St. Saviour's being laid with full Masonic Honours in August 1898. The Church was built over the following year from a design by architect Edward Curtis, who concurrently designed Nelson’s Catholic Cathedral of Mary Immaculate. Architecturally the stone and wood-frame gable-roofed building is described as an excellent example of Gothic Perpendicular church architecture and a quintessential English parish church.

St. Saviour’s, 1903
(showing Mission Room to the left)

Mr. Akehurst remained as Vicar of the parish and afterwards as Rector until 1901 when he resigned. In January 1902, Rev. F.H. Graham became Rector and served until the early 1940’s. With the opening of the Church in the late fall of 1899, the first baptism and marriage ceremonies took place, however, it wasn’t until the following May of 1900 during the founding of the Diocese of the Kootenay that the Church was officially consecrated. Prior to the building of the Church, the original 1892 Mission Room was moved to the adjacent lot where it served many years as the Church Hall until the adjacent Memorial Hall was built in 1922.

Unfortunately, in 1928 the Church burned down to its granite half-walls but within a year a rebuilt church, largely conforming to the original design, was opened. The Church was expanded at that time to include today’s sanctuary and transepts with the stained glass windows donated and installed after the fire.

In 2012, the Memorial Hall was sold and the proceeds used for the side addition to the Church, containing a modern kitchen and washrooms. Over the years the Parish has shrunk with the de-consecration of smaller outlying churches to the present Anglican Parish of Kokanee, which includes the churches of St. Michael and All Angels in Balfour; St. Marks in Kaslo; and St.Saviour’s Pro-Cathedral in Nelson. However, the present-day congregations remain vibrant, continuing to offer worship services and community ministry, and are looking forward to the future and the next 125 years of Anglican service in the Kootenays. 

(Written by local historian Greg Scott, including notes by Jonn Lavinnder)