By chance, a few weeks ago I drove by Dufferin Presbyterian Church. Years had passed since I was last on Dufferin Street. Immediately childhood memories flooded my brain. When my family moved to Toronto, I was sent to Pauline Public School and Sunday school at Dufferin Presbyterian.
I thought about all the long-ago Saturdays when I walked to the church for Junior Choir practice and about the white gowns, with the pert black bows, we wore on Sundays when we warbled our anthems. After the weekly choir practice, my big treat was buying a nickel doughnut, with maple frosting.
But there is one memory some people think was, perhaps, a hallucination on my part. I recall the Chief Elder coming into the sanctuary, before the minister, and, ritualistically, surveying the congregation, to ensure there were no English spies present. Then he would place the Bible on the lectern. Although this was the 1950s, this custom must have originated, with the early Covenanters, in 17th Century Scotland.
I also remember the inspirational services starting with the singing of Holy Holy Holy and then the lovely offering hymn (doxology), Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow. Also forever engraved in my mind is the poetic flow of the iambic pentameters of the King James Version of the Holy Bible and the minister ending each service with the Mizpah Benediction: “The Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from the other.”
I also recall the annaual Robbie Burns’ suppers, with haggis, neeps and tatties, and old Mr. Mileham singing classic Burns’ tunes like My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose in the plain church basement. In that same Dufferin Street basement, bake sales and teas always featured fancy tea sandwiches, including pinwheels, with a pickle in the middle, and stacked rainbow fingers, with pink and green cream cheese. Along with the usual assortment of church-baking, someone always purveyed cocoa “macaroons,” a simple confection that I learned to whip up as a teenager.
Sadly Dufferin Presbyterian, founded in 1907, ceased as a Presbyterian congregation in 1993. The church was used by other organizations and then the property sold, in 2012, to a developer. Part of the building will be integrated into a 14-unit complex called Sanctuary Lofts. Perhaps, in the silence of night, some sensitive resident will hear a haunting sound that sounds, strangely, like an old-fashioned hymn. (Donna Jean MacKinnon)
COCOA MACAROONS
Bring to a boil:
2 cups white sugar. ½ cup cocoa. ½ cup milk. ½ cup margarine.
Take off heat and add:
1 cup sweet shredded coconut. 3 cups rolled oats.
Drop teaspoons of mixture on to waxed paper. The macaroons will harden as they cool.
