Was the eldest of five siblings born to Murray McCheyne Coles and Jennie Bowyer on a farm near Woodbridge Ontario. The Church Union struggle attending the formation of the United Church of Canada in 1925 moved Stuart’s Plymouth Brethren parents to join the surviving Presbyterian Church in Canada. When he was ten years old, he took the first recorded step in his theological formation: he memorized the Shorter Catechism intended as a child’s introduction to the 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith. With a Bachelor of Arts degree from Victoria University in Toronto, he entered Knox College for ministerial training under Dr Walter Bryden. The Toronto Presbytery of his church ordained him in 1942 as a Minister of Word and Sacraments. He married Teca Court, and they started out on a 15-year series of parish ministries: the Magnetawan Parish, North Bay, Oshawa. With Teca and their children, Geordon, Kennedy and Catherine, he spent memorable summers at Glen Mhor Camp and in leadership of the Presbyterian Young Peoples Society.
During his ministry in Oshawa, 1951-1957, the extremely stormy 1955 strike at General Motors sparked Stuart’s concern for the integrity, the dynamic interplay of Evangelism and Justice. This integrity and interplay became the heartbeat of his theology and his instigations for the rest of his life.
One of his standout contributionswaschairing the theological team that formulated the Presbyterian Church’s1955.Confession ofFaith Concerning Church and Nation. In 1968, saying ”we have to have a change” his Presbytery nominated him for Moderator of the Venerable, General Assembly. However, that June Stuart took a key role in calling together a rambunctious counter-assembly of Presbyterians identified as “The Congress of Concern.” It produced a hatful of reformational proposals intended to move a regressive denomination out of the past, nerving it to wake up and confront the perplexing realities of the present world.
The Congress’ brash defacing of the Presbyterian idols of decency and order spooked his church too painfully. So in 1969, the Presbyterian chapter in this life story – 42 years from its 1927 debut with the Shorter Catechism – took an abrupt turn. Stuart and his much-loved church found themselves at a parting of the ways. For the next 19 years, this high-voltage Presbyterian was to experience a border-breaking but rewarding ministry with Bathurst Street United Church, Toronto. He and that by then notorious Congregation (friend of Dr James Endicott and the Chinese Communist Revolution) shared many disturbing ideas of dynamic 20th-century discipleship in the Canadian urban context. Their urbanized ecclesiology gained some attention, some traction, in a small but seminal book on change-for-the-better Christian presence in contemporary urban realities, including relationships. This study was published in 1980, to applause from the United Church’s General Council, as A Dream Not For TheDrowsy, its text by Stuart, with cartoons by his long-time collaborator the Rev. Jim Houston.
For several years, beginning in 1985, Stuart played a major role infounding and nurturing FoodShare Toronto, an experimental enterprise in social and economic justice, confronting hunger and malnutrition. In 28 years, it has grown into a significant, multi-staff community initiative. It has, inter alia, generated Senator Art Eggleton’s well-researched and insightful study “We Can’t Afford Poverty.”
When Stuart “retired” from Bathurst Street United Church in 1988, he became deeply involved with the United Church’s Regent Park Community Ministry, the Toronto Christian ResourceCentre, Downtown Economic Enterprise Development (DEED), and FarFetched Fabrications, all in Toronto’s gravely troubled Regent Park. He brought with him a slowly evolving Jesus And Justice Songbook that seeks to correct the triumphalism and the segregationism of our church hymnbook hangovers from the near-death Christendom era. For about 25 years from the 1980s, these songs were the distinguishing feature marking the Regent Park community’s Good Friday Walk. They focused on relating the implications of Jesus’ death by crucifixion more dynamically to the urgency of just and loving action in human relationships rather than the garden variety Good Friday fixation with salvation from personal shortcomings.
Central to Stuart’s story in the years from 1959 to his death was his passionate commitment to an intentional community that began life on the Horseshoe Hill farm in 1959 as Caledon Contemporaries. It has moved its base from Caledon and is now known as Kimbercote – on a picturesque and spirit-lifting 100-acre site in Grey Highlands. Members are dedicated to teaching and engaging Ontario’s community-impoverished people in their townships and cities toward recovery of community – how to live together respectfully, justly and generously.
If you find Stuart’s story significant, you can remember him by joining Kimbercote and/or donating to its work at www.kimbercote.org or Box 1 Heathcote, ON N0H 1N0.
Cremation has taken place, interment to follow. Memorial “Fare-Well Festival” to be held at at FoodShare, Toronto on June 22.
Condolences can be sent to:
stuartcolesfamily@gmail.com or 1207-15 Viking Lane, ON, M9B 0A4.
