Edward A W Smith | University of Guelph (original) (raw)

Papers by Edward A W Smith

Social History/Histoire Sociale, 2003

St. Luke's Anglican Church came into being in Hamilton's north-end in the summer of 1882, as Hami... more St. Luke's Anglican Church came into being in Hamilton's north-end in the summer of 1882, as Hamilton's working class was entering the second phase of Canadian industrialization. Urban geography, class, and ethnicity were factors in the establishment of the parish in this singularly working-class district of the city, which included a high proportion of immigrants. Into the mix were also thrown difering conceptions of Anglican parishes held by clergy and laity. For the congregation of St. Luke's, a local parish church became important to creating an identity separate from oldel; more established congregations dominated by elite Canadian Anglicans. * Edward Smith is a sessional lecturer at the University of Guelph, where he teaches courses on religion and society and a survey of world religions. 1 See especially Bettina Bradbury, "The Home as Workplace", in Paul Craven, ed., Labouring Lives: Work and Workers in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995). pp. 412479, and Working Families: Age, Gendec and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993). Studies have concentrated on the working class, and much work remains to be done toward understanding the lives of the middle classes and elites in Canadian society. 2 Recent exceptions are found in the work of Lynne Marks, Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), and of Dons Mary O'Dell on small-town class and religion in Belleville, Ontario, "The Class Character of Church Participation in Late Nineteenth-Century Belleville, Ontario" (PhD dissertation, Queen's University, 1990). 3 Perhaps the earliest work to address the sense of a pervasive and underlying religiosity in nineteenthcentury Canada was William Westfall's study, Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989). which, uniquely for Canada, employed the study of architectural forms to understand the Victorian mentality. Lynne Marks in Revivals and Roller Rinks has also employed wide-ranging evidence, but argues rather for a modified form of "religion as function" in the context of small-town Ontario in the late nineteenth century. Religion for Marks, especially as it regards class, is presented as a function of social respectability, a social system that leaves the working classes largely on the outside. 4 I assembled the statistical data used to delineate St. Luke's by manually counting the number of Anglicans reported on the nominal census rolls for 1901. This census for the first time provided street addresses for each household indexed to the rolls, allowing a reconstruction of data, aided by the clear definition of the boundaries of St. Luke's parish into a "census" parish. St. Luke's parish consisted of those parts of subdivisions E6, E7, E8, F7, F8, and F9 north of the Grand Trunk main line (beginning at Strachan Street) and all of E9, F10, F1 1, and F12. Although frozen in time in the spring of 1901, these data provide a useful point of comparison to church records and estimates. Church records for St. Luke's covered a wider period of time, but many of these are now lost. Most useful for my purposes were reports of vestry (church council) meetings in the local press and statistical data gleaned from records of rites of passage, service registers, and financial records. All original vestry minutes prior to World War I are lost, forcing me to rely on reports in the Hamilton Spectator and the Hamilton limes. These local press reports on the annual meetings of Anglican vestriesheld usually the Monday following Easterwere reasonably accurate and often quite detailed, containing direct quotes and some financial figures, as well as listing the officers of the parish for the coming year. I supplemented these data with information contained in Hamilton city directories and assessment rolls. The local newspapers also reported long and lovingly on the intimate doings of local churches, ranging from their political battles to festivals, concerts, and building programmes and even to reprinting long sermons and financial statements. Religious affairs in general were accorded a place in the Hamilton newspapers almost the equal of national and local political events and conflicts. Local church choirs, especially their directors and soloists, were given "pop-star" treatment in two-page spreads. St. Luke's church, as a small parish, did not figure largely in these reports, but was mentioned on occasion over the years, sometimes in great detail, other times with only small notices. Yet it fit easily into the regional pattern of reporting on church events. Mention was usually made of the working-class nature of the parish, but this was not unduly emphasized.

The Canadian Historical Review, 2005

Social History/Histoire Sociale, 2003

St. Luke's Anglican Church came into being in Hamilton's north-end in the summer of 1882, as Hami... more St. Luke's Anglican Church came into being in Hamilton's north-end in the summer of 1882, as Hamilton's working class was entering the second phase of Canadian industrialization. Urban geography, class, and ethnicity were factors in the establishment of the parish in this singularly working-class district of the city, which included a high proportion of immigrants. Into the mix were also thrown difering conceptions of Anglican parishes held by clergy and laity. For the congregation of St. Luke's, a local parish church became important to creating an identity separate from oldel; more established congregations dominated by elite Canadian Anglicans. * Edward Smith is a sessional lecturer at the University of Guelph, where he teaches courses on religion and society and a survey of world religions. 1 See especially Bettina Bradbury, "The Home as Workplace", in Paul Craven, ed., Labouring Lives: Work and Workers in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995). pp. 412479, and Working Families: Age, Gendec and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993). Studies have concentrated on the working class, and much work remains to be done toward understanding the lives of the middle classes and elites in Canadian society. 2 Recent exceptions are found in the work of Lynne Marks, Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), and of Dons Mary O'Dell on small-town class and religion in Belleville, Ontario, "The Class Character of Church Participation in Late Nineteenth-Century Belleville, Ontario" (PhD dissertation, Queen's University, 1990). 3 Perhaps the earliest work to address the sense of a pervasive and underlying religiosity in nineteenthcentury Canada was William Westfall's study, Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989). which, uniquely for Canada, employed the study of architectural forms to understand the Victorian mentality. Lynne Marks in Revivals and Roller Rinks has also employed wide-ranging evidence, but argues rather for a modified form of "religion as function" in the context of small-town Ontario in the late nineteenth century. Religion for Marks, especially as it regards class, is presented as a function of social respectability, a social system that leaves the working classes largely on the outside. 4 I assembled the statistical data used to delineate St. Luke's by manually counting the number of Anglicans reported on the nominal census rolls for 1901. This census for the first time provided street addresses for each household indexed to the rolls, allowing a reconstruction of data, aided by the clear definition of the boundaries of St. Luke's parish into a "census" parish. St. Luke's parish consisted of those parts of subdivisions E6, E7, E8, F7, F8, and F9 north of the Grand Trunk main line (beginning at Strachan Street) and all of E9, F10, F1 1, and F12. Although frozen in time in the spring of 1901, these data provide a useful point of comparison to church records and estimates. Church records for St. Luke's covered a wider period of time, but many of these are now lost. Most useful for my purposes were reports of vestry (church council) meetings in the local press and statistical data gleaned from records of rites of passage, service registers, and financial records. All original vestry minutes prior to World War I are lost, forcing me to rely on reports in the Hamilton Spectator and the Hamilton limes. These local press reports on the annual meetings of Anglican vestriesheld usually the Monday following Easterwere reasonably accurate and often quite detailed, containing direct quotes and some financial figures, as well as listing the officers of the parish for the coming year. I supplemented these data with information contained in Hamilton city directories and assessment rolls. The local newspapers also reported long and lovingly on the intimate doings of local churches, ranging from their political battles to festivals, concerts, and building programmes and even to reprinting long sermons and financial statements. Religious affairs in general were accorded a place in the Hamilton newspapers almost the equal of national and local political events and conflicts. Local church choirs, especially their directors and soloists, were given "pop-star" treatment in two-page spreads. St. Luke's church, as a small parish, did not figure largely in these reports, but was mentioned on occasion over the years, sometimes in great detail, other times with only small notices. Yet it fit easily into the regional pattern of reporting on church events. Mention was usually made of the working-class nature of the parish, but this was not unduly emphasized.

The Canadian Historical Review, 2005