Presbyterian Church in Canada - Background and Roots

Background and Roots

In 1759 Great Britain gained control of the French colony of New France, seized during the Seven Years' War. At the Plains of Abraham outside of the walled Citadelle of Quebec, there was a Scottish Battalion, the 78th Fraser Highlanders, complete with a Presbyterian chaplain, Reverend Robert MacPherson. This group became the roots of St. Andrew's Church in Quebec City.

In the colony of Nova Scotia the Presbyterians were initially Reformed settlers of Germanic roots, who started St. Andrew's in Lunenburg in 1753; they joined Church of Scotland's Nova Scotia Synod (which had been founded in August 1833) in 1837. In Truro, Nova Scotia, First United Church (Presbyterian until 1925) was founded in 1760 by Scottish settlers. St. James Presbyterian Church was formed in 1925 by the minority that did not join the United Church. In Halifax, St. Matthew's dates back to 1749 as a "Dissenting Protestant Worship House", and adhered to Presbyterian polity at a later date; the Presbyterian Church of St. David is another 1925 "Minority Group" from within downtown Halifax congregations including St Matthew's, and celebrated its 80th Anniversary in 2005, meeting in the former Grafton Street Methodist (1869) building, acquired in their early days.

After the departure of the Thirteen American Colonies from British North America, there was an increase in population within the Canadas, divided in 1791 into Upper Canada (now called Ontario) and Lower Canada (now called Quebec), including most of the previously populated areas of the New France colony, and within the Maritimes, including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.

Some of the early Canadian Presbyterians were United Empire Loyalists of Scots descent, and others came directly from Scotland, such as in the 1773 arrival of The Hector in Pictou, Nova Scotia.

Early Clergy represented many strands of reformed theology, and were educated in Scotland, Ireland, and the United States. Initial attempts at forming native Presbyteries were futile. American influences in the Canadas came first from Dutch Reformed missionaries from New York State, and later American Presbyterians from many different Presbyterian groupings.

Congregations were eventually formed in many communities (initially in townships over towns), and usually after a lengthy period without any supply from clergy (in the Red River Colony in Manitoba, it took thirty years); in many cases, family worship consisted of devotions and catechisms.

Two events led to the early departure of American support of Canadian Churches: the War of 1812 (1812–14), and the 1837 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada; the latter resulted in political reform, and responsible government; Upper Canada became Canada West, and Lower Canada became Canada East in 1841, until 1867. In southern Ontario, there was once a Stamford Presbytery; their last congregation, located near Milton, Ontario closed in 1951, and Stamford Church in Niagara Falls joined the PCC in 1936.

In the Maritimes (now the Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island), the original Scots Presbyterians were from two branches of the Secessionist United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and prior to their union in 1817 which created the Synod of Nova Scotia, there was the Associate Presbytery of Truro, erected in 1786, and the Presbytery of Pictou, erected in 1795. There were still Church of Scotland congregations and ministers who remained outside this group, before its incorporation in New Brunswick on January 30, 1833 (Synod from 1835) and in Nova Scotia.

In 1811 Rev. Thomas McCulloch formed the Pictou Academy, the first educational school to train ministers. Some of its graduates travelled to Scotland to continue their training. This led McCulloch to Halifax to teach, where Dalhousie University was eventually formed; from another academy in West River, Pictou County, (1848), led also to Halifax as Presbyterian College (Halifax), later Pine Hill Seminary (United Church), that since 1971, is now part of the Atlantic School of Theology.

In the Canadas, the United Presbytery of the Canadas was formed in 1818, as a looser arrangement of clergy supported by other groups. By 1839 this United Synod (at one time there were three presbyteries) was absorbed by The Presbyterian Church of Canada in Connection with the Established Church of Scotland, erected into a synod by the parent church in 1831, bolstered with missionaries supplied from the Glasgow Missionary Society. In 1834, this group also began to receive a number of United Synod clergy and congregations, which led to the aforementioned union with the Auld Kirk by 1840.

In 1831, the United Associate Synod in Scotland (after 1847, the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland) agreed to send missionaries to the Canadas; three were appointed, and arrived in 1832. On Christmas Day 1834, a Canadian Synod was erected in the newly incorporated city of Toronto, which also included congregations and at least one minister from the United Synod of the Canadas. They later started their own Toronto congregation in 1838. and a Theological College in London, Canada West in 1844.

In Toronto, the United Synod of Canada congregation (formed in the Town of York in 1820), and their minister Rev. James Harris withdrew in 1834, remaining independent until 1844, when they joined with Free Church dissenters from the Church of Scotland's St. Andrew's Toronto (formed in 1830) to create Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto.

The unity in the Church of Scotland Canada Synod following the United Synod merger was short-lived, but provided the opportunity to establish a Theological College, Queen's College, in Kingston, Canada West in 1841; Queen's Theological College (United Church) is now part of Queen's University.

In June 1844 the Synod met in Kingston, Ontario, and paralleled the situation that had affected the Scottish Assembly in 1843, when a large group also withdrew, and formed a Free Church of Scotland Canadian Synod. By the following September, most of the theological students at Queen's had joined the Free Church, proceeded to Toronto and founded Knox College; they had merged with the aforementioned United Presbyterian Church of Scotland college in 1861, which had moved to Toronto from London, Ontario in 1853.

In the Maritime Provinces, colonies were set up in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and on Cape Breton Island. As in both Upper Canada and Lower Canada, there were various groups organizing congregations. The effects of the 1843 disruption in the Church of Scotland was felt in Nova Scotia; the colonial ministers were either invited back to congregations in Scotland, or they sided with the Free Church in Nova Scotia and elsewhere. The formal structure of the Church of Scotland was affected there for a decade.

In 1860, a year before a union occurred in the Canadas, the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces was created by the merger of Free Church and United Presbyterian Church congregations in Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island, and in 1866, they were joined by their compatriots in New Brunswick.

In June 1861, the Canada Presbyterian Church was formed with the merger of the Canadian Synods of the Free Church of Scotland and the United Presbyterian Church. This became the dominant Presbyterian grouping in the Canadas, growing in cities, towns, villages, and even into the United States, including Illinois (Chicago, a French community at St. Anne and a Gaelic-speaking congregation in Elmira) and border cities in Michigan and New York State, as well as into the Canadian Northwest Territories with Rev. John Black to the Red River Colony at Kildonan, and Rev. James Nisbet to Prince Albert. Robert Jamieson was sent by the inaugural Synod of the Canada Presbyterian Church from the York Mills and Fisherville charge near Toronto (The latter Church is now located in Toronto's Black Creek Pioneer Village, adjacent to a Manse from the oldest 1817 Toronto area congregation located in Richmond Hill) to the British Columbia colony, where he started congregations in New Westminster, Nanaimo, and in the Fraser Valley. After 1875, he joined with the Church of Scotland, until the Canadian Pacific Railway reached Burrard's Inlet (later Vancouver) in 1885, they rejoined (along with other congregations) the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and a British Columbia Synod was formed later.

The Canadian Presbyterian Church started a second theological college, The Presbyterian College, Montreal in 1867 (charter granted 1865). Both Knox College and The Presbyterian College, Montreal remained with the Presbyterian Church in Canada after Church Union in 1925.

In 1867 the Church of Scotland's bodies in the Maritmes merged to become the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of the Maritime Provinces of British North America.

In 1869 the Canada Presbyterian Church added another level to its growing Church structure—its Annual Synod became a General Assembly, and four smaller, regional synods were formed: Montreal, serving both Quebec and Eastern Ontario; Toronto; Hamilton; and London, with a few congregations in the USA.

The first Moderator of the CPC's General Assembly, Rev. William Ormiston, then of Central C.P.C. in Hamilton, Ontario, sent out letters at the end of his term (he was moving to serve a Dutch Reformed Church in New York City), for these groups to hold a conference of all strands of Presbyterianism in the new Dominion of Canada. This conference was held in Montreal in September 1870, and led these four groups to produce a basis of union, which in June 1874 saw both the Canada Presbyterian Church's General Assembly and Church of Scotland Canada Synod meet in Ottawa, where the proceedings and final preparations and delegations met in the nearby Knox (CPC) and St. Andrew's (Church of Scotland) congregations.