Hello and welcome to the end of another weekend. Where do these things go, anyway?
I have spent the last several days working and sleeping and doing stuff around the house. Tuesday night was interesting. We got home around 5:30, whereupon I told Patricia that I was going to take a short nap. I didn't really get up again until 5:30 Wednesday morning. Patricia was quite worried about me, but I felt fine the next morning.
I wish I could say that we did a lot this weekend, but we did not. I ventured out around 4pm to get a couple turkey dinners from a local church that was selling them for a good price. Otherwise, we stayed in all weekend.
We had thought about going to the Valley this weekend. The Devour! festival was in Wolfville again, and we had considered going. The CBC coverage sounded interesting on Friday, but there was something that ticked me off. Here it is.
They were broadcasting from the new Church pub on Main Street. It was a church for 100 years or so before the United Church sold it along with some other churches so they could build a new super church in nearby New Minas. The thinking was that parishioners would just, um, flock to the new church. The woman Jeff Douglas interviewed made it sound like everybody was accepting of the change.
I can tell you that this was not true.
One of the churches sold was the Canard United Church, which I attended for many years. As I understand it, the people at the pastoral charge showed up one week and said that they would be selling the place, that people had "voted" for this to happen and that people would just move over to this new church. The ballots had already been destroyed so there was no going back for a recount or anything like that.
The Canard United Church, along with the cemetery, was sold to a man who was kind enough not to want to turn it into an Air B&B or a brothel or a winery or anything like that. He was amenable to selling it to the people who had attended that very church for decades. I doubt if he made a penny off the sale. He sold it to those parishioners, who had to fight tooth and nail with the United Church just to keep the furniture in the vestry. The pews, I am guessing, would have been fixtures so not something the United Church could have stripped out of the place.
The new United Church in New Minas has been far from being a raging success. More than a few people quietly started going to the new Canard church from Wolfville, from Kentville, whose own church had been sold under them. The United Church folks who sold the churches were none too pleased that Canard had managed to keep their church going, but they no longer own the place and can do nothing about it. But this new church has to use other hymn books, other prayer books, and may not use any trappings from the United Church in their services.
We attended a rummage sale at the church last year. It was nice to see the place again after far too many years. Some things that my father had built for the church were still there, and Glenn Ells was only too happy to show them to me. He and his family have been members of that church for probably 100 years. The "original" Glenn Ells, killed in World War I, is buried in the adjoining cemetery.
Glenn is a Liberal and served as MLA down there for several years. George Archibald was a Tory and later served as MLA down there. They attended the same church! I recall it was in... 1988 I think, when they were running against each other in the provincial election. They were decorous toward one another, but I do remember George standing up and reading some lay scriptures one week. I wonder if Glenn considered doing the same thing?
I had such good times at that church in the 1970's and 1980's. People treated me well. Even the kids my own age treated me well, something in sharp contrast to the kids at the junior high I was attending at the time.
Ha! Funny story time. I will never forget the time the janitor or whoever it was, failed to show up one week and they were worried about being able to conduct the service on time, so I, a little one, was boosted up on the shoulders of a taller man and shimmied the window open. I broke into my own church!
I later became the janitor at that church. I was not very good at it, and nobody reading this would disagree. I would go there after classes were over at Acadia University for the day and I had a bit of time to myself. I would have my radio on while I was vacuuming or mopping the floors or cleaning the collection plates or the bathroom. It gave me time to reflect on my classes and got me away from the halls of academe for a much-needed few hours. I cherish that time to this day. The times were simpler, and much-missed.
I stopped going to church when I moved to the city in 1988. I have never found a place that I was comfy in, but I haven't looked much, either. If I did find one, it would have to be the kind of place that let me form the kind of memories of the Canard United Church of all those years ago.
But one last comment on the United Church, and its pell-mell shedding of properties, with or without the permission or blessing of the people who supported them all along. Shame on them. How dare they conduct these votes and then destroy the ballots? How dare they play hard ball with the people who just want to continue to go to a local church? Where the... hell... is their Christianity?
On that lovely note, I wish you all a pleasant evening. I hope to see you all here tomorrow.
See you then.
Bevboy
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