Wychwood-Davenport Presbyterian Church has celebrated its Last Easter on St. Clair Ave. On Sunday, April 27, the church will be the scene of a Decomissioning Service and May 1 a developer takes over the building. But on this significant Easter Sunday, we sang the old familiar hymns and the Interim Minister, Rev. Giovanna Cieli, preached an uplifting sermon of hope (based on Luke 24, where the women discover the stone, at the tomb entrance, rolled away) to the 20, or so, faithful people who had sat in the same pews for decades. A verse in Psalm 118 pretty well summed up the atmosphere: “This is the day which the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”
The Wychwood choir, reduced to a trio consisting of Francine, a Swiss immigrant, Melita, a plucky gal from Saskatchewan, and Adele, originally from the West Indies, sang the old chestnut, I Walk in the Garden Alone. Later we joked, these three women could easily sing backup for a Motown group.
Flipping through several mouldering hymn books, Psalters and Bibles (the poetic King James Version) containing the names of long-forgotten donors, was certainly a melancholy experience. And not one name on a WWII plaque, including that of a Rev. Gordon Rintoul, rang a bell.
The demise and sale of a church building, erected in 1925, takes some doing. And most of the tasks, such as dealing with the realtor and Presbytery, and disposing of all chattels, fell upon the shoulders of the indomitable Chief Elder Margaret Millar. Margaret was born into Wychwood, left when her family moved closer to Davenport Presbyterian and then found herself back at Wychwood, in 1972, when Davenport and Wychwood amalgamated.
I helped Margaret empty some kitchen cupboards and pack up 200 side and dinner plates, destined for Runnymede Presbyterian. That effort still left stacks more of Wychwood’s old dinner service. These dishes, pretty vintage English china in the Montrose pattern, were made by Swinnerton’s pottery, in Staffordshire, C 1950. In total there must have been enough four-piece place settings for 250 to 300 people – this chinaware, a testimony to decades ago when Toronto the Good was a Protestant city and social life revolved around its churches.
While helping Margaret, I ventured into the furnace room and discovered toddler-sized Sunday school chairs, sad survivors from a time when phalanxes of scrubbed and combed children appeared in Presbyterian basements for Sunday school to learn their Catechism. There were different chair styles representing four eras. A wee wooden chair, from the 1920s, with a rounded back and turned spindles and a classic, from the 1950s, had a chrome frame and turquoise seat and back.
A beat-up wooden cabinet was stuffed with pristine table clothes, soft from being lovingly washed and ironed so many times. There was also a stack of bridge-sized cloths, many of them featuring needle work. One, made from unbleached linen, has edges blanket-stitched, with red thread, and in the field, it has the signatures of 50 women, embroidered in different colours of thread. Margaret figured the names belonged to members of an early Women’s Missionary Society group (WMS). There was also a stash of handmade aprons – one featured a map of Newfoundland- and all kinds of tea towels with Scottish and Robbie Burnsian themes. Ultimately, everything, including furniture, not claimed, by anyone, was hauled away in two dumpsters.
I have many personal memories of Wychwood. My mother, Dorothy, womaned the White Elephant table, at every bazaar, until she died. She ran it as if she were selling Ming vases at Sotheby’s. At Christmas teas, my sister, also a Dorothy, and I lugged around endless gigantic coffee and teas pots and sandwich plates to hundreds of tea room customers. At first the tea tables all had table cloths and set with china. But that was some time ago. In the past decade, there was not enough woman-power left to iron the linens and wash all the Montrose dishes. Inevitably, we used paper plates and plastic table covers, but we always put out the good china tea cups and silver spoons. After Dorothy went to live in Costa Rica, I had a succession of pot-bearing helpers.
Everyone at Wychwood will cherish their memories of the old brick and mortar church, but the story isn’t finished. For the time being, Runnymede Presbyterian is providing office space for Rev. Cieli and also storage space, for important church equipment, while Wychwood’s diminutive congregation re-groups. The congregation already has a temporary plan in place and, on May 4, it will hold its first service, in a new venue. They will worship at St. Matthew’s Bracondale House, a seniors’ residence, at 707 St. Clair West. Rev. Cieli will continue to preside.
But before that, Wychwood-Davenport Presbyterian Church will be de-commissioned Sunday, April 27. This historic service starts at 7 p.m., at 155 Wychwood Ave, at the corner of St. Clair W. All welcome.
(For more insights into the history of Wychwood and its people, see past postings of RECIPES and MEMORIES. Search: Yvonne’s Guyanese Cook Up. Melita’s Peppernuts. Mary Fair’s Potato scones. Barbara’s Happy Cake. Margaret’s Working Girls Frying Pan Cookies.
