Kettle Honoured, Again
After a distinguished career as a Presbyterian padre, Rev. Dr. David Kettle is preparing for a new role as secretary general of the Canadian Agency of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, starting Aug. 1.
“I am both surprised and honoured to take on this challenge most especially since on my watch we will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of WWI and the 75th anniversary of WWII,” he told the Record in an email.
The Canadian CWGC cares for the North and South American graves or memorials of all commonwealth servicemen and women who died during the two world wars. That’s about 21,000 war dead in 3,500 cemeteries.
In total, the U.K.-based CWGC cares for almost 1.7 million war dead on six continents. ¦ —CW
Kairos Goes to the Congo
An ecumenical delegation led by Kairos, a peace and justice organization, headed to the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in June. Peter Lamont, a chief military judge with the Department of Justice, and a member at St. Andrew’s, Ottawa, represents the Presbyterian Church.
Delegates met with communities, human rights defenders, civil society organizations, churches, and government representatives to better understand the human rights’ situation there, as well as the environmental impact of resource extraction on communities in the eastern DRC.
Lamont told the Record he was “looking forward to learning more about the plight of female victims of conflict-related sexual violence in that part of the world.”
¦ —AM with files from Kairos
CFGB Supports Legislation
new legislation that will guide the amalgamation of the Canadian International Development Agency and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade into the new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has the support of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank—an aid agency partnered with the PCC.
The new structure includes a dedicated Deputy Minister for International Development, a provision that will help protect the integrity of the international development and humanitarian assistance program.
Executive Director Jim Cornelius testified at a Parliamentary Standing Committee hearing on the new legislation, where he shared a simple message: “As I travel across this country speaking with thousands of Canadians, a consistent message I hear is that many Canadians care about those living in poverty in developing countries, take personal action to do something about it, and expect Canada as a country to be responding to the needs of the world’s most vulnerable people. Canadians believe our aid efforts should be about making a difference for the poor, and that it is not about what’s in it for us.”
The new legislation implements the measures outlined in the 2013 budget and was announced in April. ¦ —CFGB
Middle East Christians
Rev. Dr. Rick Fee and Rev. Dr. Glynnis Williams represented the PCC at a conference to discuss Christian witness in the Middle East, in Lebanon in May.
The conference brought together members of the Middle East Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. In the statement, the church leaders called for churches in the Middle East to “commit to support one another in steadfast prayer” and for the MECC and WCC to work for peace and ecumenical and inter-faith understanding on a number of fronts.
The full statement can be found on the WCC’s website, oikoumene.org.
Stalwart Member Passes at 105 Years Margaret Williams remembered.
Margaret Christine Ross was born March 22, 1908 on a farm near Loganville, N.S. Her father Kenneth Ross in his mid-40s had married the local school teacher, Jessie Sutherland, in 1903. Margaret was the third of six children. Her grandfather, Hugh Ross, was a shepherd who with land purchased from Queen Victoria emigrated from Scotland to Nova Scotia in 1854.
Margaret’s family remained continuing Presbyterians after the disruption of 1925. The local congregation in West Branch to which she had belonged as a professing member from age 12 voted to go into church union, but the minority group resolved to continue a faithful witness as Presbyterians, and by June 1927 had built and dedicated a new building. The congregation was named Burns Memorial Church, after Rev. James Alexander Stead Burns, who was the first minister of the congregation after 1925, and who within a year of presiding at the funeral service for Margaret’s father held in the Ross’ family home, was himself called to higher service.
Teaching and missionary work were very much twin expressions of Margaret’s strong, personal faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. She began attending meetings of the Women’s Missionary Society at age 15. She obtained her provincial teacher’s license in
1925 and taught in various places in Nova Scotia.
Margaret enrolled in the Missionary and Deaconess Training Home (later known as Ewart College) in Toronto, and graduated in April 1935 with the prize for general proficiency. She was assigned to work with the Chalmers Jack Mission in Cape Breton; for reasons lost in time, her service of designation to the Order of Deaconesses by the Presbytery of Pictou did not take place until August 7, 1936 at Burns Memorial Church, West Branch.
Her service in Cape Breton was followed by itinerant work throughout Nova Scotia. One assignment under the direction of Dr. Maxwell MacOdrum, Minister of Bethel Church, Sydney, was to go to Dutch Brook and “do whatever I could do.” Her organisation of a church school and missionary society was blessed with such success that some years later the local women’s missionary group was named the Margaret Ross Auxiliary.
Margaret was present at the unveiling of the MacGregor Cairn in Pictou County to mark the 150th anniversary of Presbyterian witness in Nova Scotia in the fall of 1936, and vividly recalled the occasion 70 years later during worship at Parkwood Church, Ottawa.
In 1939, Margaret married John Williams, a Cape Bretoner who enlisted in the air force and after the war studied at Presbyterian College, Montreal, graduating in 1950. For many years Margaret was minister’s wife, including typing (and first correcting, at his
instance) her husband’s sermons. They served in Ormstown and Rockburn, Milverton and North Mornington (following which Margaret was given a life membership in the WMS), Lloydminster, Alberta, Sutton West, Niagara-on-the-lake, and Hull and Aylmer, Quebec.
In 1962, Margaret returned to teaching, this time on the Mud Lake Ojibway native reservation, near Peterborough, Ont. From the fall of 1963, she was appointed as assistant librarian at Knox College, Toronto, and so served until 1974. Thereafter, she worked (night shifts) at Armagh House for a period, and served as organist at Loggie Geddie Church, Toronto.
In 1982, she returned to Ottawa, and in 1983 at age 75 was elected an elder at Parkwood Church, Ottawa, where she served actively until age 98, including among other duties teaching communicants’ classes and the Bethel Bible series, providing leadership with the Inter-Church Women’s Council in sponsoring the annual World Day of Prayer in the community, and visiting faithfully families and individuals in her elder’s district, travelling by bus in good weather and bad. She was an elder commissioner of the Presbytery of Ottawa to the 1984 General Assembly.
At the 134th General Assembly in 2008, the 100th anniversary of the Order of Diaconal Ministries was celebrated, and Margaret was presented to and honoured by the Assembly, having then been a servant of the order through 73 of its 100 years.
Margaret marked her 105th birthday on March 22, 2013, lucid enough to finish the words of a psalm quoted and to say a heartfelt “Amen” to prayers of thanksgiving and intercession, and very pleased the next day to enjoy the strawberries atop her birthday cake.
Two sons, Kenneth (and wife Pauline) and Glen (and wife Carol-Lynne), and three grandchildren, Stephan, Annie and Maggie, and three great-grandchildren, Adam, Oscar, and Marion, brought her much joy.
In the presence of family, she passed peacefully into the presence of her Saviour on the morning of the Lord’s Day, June 9, 2013. She requested her grandchildren to read the scriptures at her funeral, and left her pastor clear indication of the text which she wished proclaimed: “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” (2 Corinthians 4: 5).
– Rev. James T. Hurd is minister at Parkwood, Ottawa.
Authors Awarded
Rev. Lawrence Brice and Jayne self, both members of the PCC, made trips to the winner’s podium at the annual Word Guild awards.
Brice’s Confident Faith: In a World That Wants To Believe, took the top prize for Instructional Book and Apologetic/Evangelism.
Self won for Novel/Suspense, with Death Of A Highland Heavyweight.
The top prize with a $5,000 purse went to Sheila Wray Gregoire for The Good Girl’s Guide To Great Sex. ¦ —The Word Guild
