Patriarchial Parishes in Canada - History

History

Orthodox believers first came to Canada in large numbers from the Austro-Hungarian province of Bukovina in the 1890s, and they settled mostly in the prairie provinces. Most self-identified as Ruthenians or Ukrainians but some were Russophiles; all of them were without any Orthodox priests. The Russian Church had prior claim to all of North America because of its missionary activity in Alaska and California. The first Orthodox service in Canada was held in 1897 by the Reverend Dimitri Kamnev and Deacon Vladimir Alexandrov. They had been dispatched by Bishop Nicholas of the Russian Orthodox Church Mission in San Francisco, USA to the tiny settlement of Wostok near Edmonton.

After the Russian Revolution, many Orthodox believers in Western Canada defected to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church or the new Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada. Those Orthodox churches in Canada that stayed with the Moscow Patriarchate, primarily in Alberta, combined with later churches built in Eastern Canada, formed the basis for what is now known as the Patriarchal Parishes of Russian Orthodox Church in Canada.