Heather MacDonald Archer, a child of the manse, has a litany of churchy memories.
Heather’s father E. Grant MacDonald, her great-uncle F. Grant Macdonald and her grandfather John C. MacDonald were all Presbyterian ministers. The family hailed from Sunny Brae, Nova Scotia, and between the three “Reverends” the Maritimes were well served.
After graduating from Presbyterian College at McGill University, Rev. E. Grant MacDonald’s first posting was in Nanaimo. After that stint he returned to eastern Canada and ministered in New Brunswick, Fort Coulounge ( Quebec), Port Hawkesbury, Fenelon Falls and Orillia. The MacDonalds had always summered in St. Andrew’s By-the-Sea (New Brunswick) where Grant met and later married Catherine (Cay) Cumming. The Cummings had emigrated from Dundee, Scotland, to Montreal when Cay was a child. In Montreal they went to the A & P.
“No. Not the grocery store but St. Andrew’s and St. Paul’s church in Montreal. Everyone there always referred to the church as the A & P,” says Heather. “When we were in Montreal, my grandmother marched me out every Sunday to the A & P.”
The family continued to spend summers in St. Andrew’s where Heather’s father filled in, on Sundays, at various churches throughout the Maritimes. Heather remembers these pulpit stops as delightful jaunts throughout the country-side.
Heather recalls, when she four or so, during the long prayer at a small church in Cape Breton, she dismantled the short red velvet curtains (on a brass rod), from the altar, while her mother sat mortified, not daring to make a scene while her husband was in mid prayer. After these in locum services, the MacDonalds, invariably, were invited to local farmhouses, for “enormous” lunches where long tables were laden with heaps of home-baking and savoury dishes made from produce grown by the congregation. Heather, now a (young) grandmother still salivates when she thinks of the raisin pies from those long-gone days.
Cay was famous for the buns she baked for church functions. Often huge bowls of rising dough and the smell of yeast would dominate the manse kitchen .The buns looked like “bums,” according to Heather. (Cay who died, in 2006, would probably be scandalized by this description.) In fact the “bums” were Parker House-style rolls, divided in the middle, so they broke easily for buttering. But from Heather’s years of teas and bazaars in Presbyterian church basements , Cay’s walnut squares and “church-lady” fancy sandwiches were her very, very favourite treats. “My brother and I used to wax poetic about church sandwiches,” she says.
Heather, a girl born with the music gene, enjoyed singing in the Junior Choir, in the days when the children wore white gowns and mortarboard caps. In her youth, Heather’s favourite anthem was The Holy City. As she matured, this segued to William Blake’s monumental hymn Jerusalem.
Heather claims she loathed Sunday school picnics. “I hated playing games – especially, that one where your leg was tied to someone else’s and you had to run. But I did love the ice cream that came in Dixie cups with little wooden spoons.”
Rev. E. Grant MacDonald’s last church (deceased 1990) was St. Mark’s, in Orillia, where he married Heather and Paul Archer. (Both are journalists and they both spent their careers toiling at the Toronto Star and, along the way, produced a set of handsome twins.)
CAY’S WALNUT SQUARES
Base:
1 cup flour. ½ cup butter or margarine. 2 tbsp icing sugar.
Mix and pat down into the bottom of an 8” x 8” baking pan. Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees. Bake 10-15 minutes until brown.
Spread the following over the base.
Mix:
2 eggs well beaten.
1 ½ cups brown sugar
½ cup chopped walnuts
½ tsp baking powder
2 tbsp flour
Bake 20 minutes (same oven) until slightly brown.
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