Methodist Church of Canada - Merger With United Church

Merger With United Church

In 1925 the Methodist Church united with 70% of the Presbyterian Church in Canada and 96% of the Congregational Union of Canada to form The United Church of Canada. The Methodist Church with its notable benefactors the Eaton and Massey families was the sponsor of Victoria College at the University of Toronto, once and still a mainstay of intellectual rigour at that university and the alma mater of many of Canada's leaders and most famous thinkers.

Although Methodists were never a majority of anglophone Canadians or even Torontonians, their political and social influence in southern Ontario generally and Toronto particularly earned Toronto its longstanding semi-facetious sobriquet "the Methodist Rome" and Metropolitan Methodist Church in Toronto that of "the Cathedral of Methodism." Many of the causes espoused by and associated with the United Church in the 20th century were, although also associated with other Evangelical Protestant denominations, especially Methodist ones, in particular sabbatarianism, temperance, the rights of women and missions to the aboriginal peoples of Canada.

Although Methodism in Canada abandoned that label in 1925 — many United Church people in Canada are entirely unaware of the term — the foremost Canadian Methodist, Egerton Ryerson, is amply commemorated and widely known through the many Canadian institutions which bear his name, including Ryerson University, the former Ryerson Press (the United Church publishing house, ultimately sold to McGraw-Hill) and numerous Ryerson United Churches across the country.