Difference between revisions of "Manitoba history"

Revision as of 20:08, 31 August 2019

Manitoba

The majority of assemblies in Manitoba were the result of efforts of early brethren who labored under tremendous hardships. Money was scarce, but they trusted God. Traveling was difficult, mostly by horse and buggy. They pioneered where there were no assemblies; they Broke Bread where they could. Souls to them were the most important business in the world.

J. Ronald went from town to town and house to house with printed and spoken messages. Robert McClurkin spent 20 years of his life pioneering on the prairies, living in The Pas in northern Manitoba and spreading the Gospel in the mining towns of Flin, Flon, Sheridan, and others. As did the others, he had often to supply the needs of his family with manual labor.

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The first of the assembly gatherings in Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, can trace its history back to about 1880, when settlers were arriving from Europe. A group met when convenient on the banks of the Red River near where the present Louise Bridge stands. Around 1880 this group met as an assembly at the Winnipeg Gospel Hall at 120 King Street. Donald Munro, Donald Ross, and John Smith came often to encourage the saints and preach the Gospel there. A letter of Alex Marshall dated July 4, 1906, speaks of the Winnipeg Gospel Hall, then having nearly 100 in fellowship. In 1907 the Winnipeg assembly procured a larger hall on Main Street to accommodate its growth. Later, with the city enlarging and the gathering increasing, the brethren at Winnipeg Gospel Hall decided to divide into two assemblies that would better serve the gospel and the saints. The West End Gospel Hall then commenced in an area where most of the Christians were living. A second assembly was started to accommodate those in North end.

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Later, from these two assemblies, another group was formed in Winnipeg, probably in about 1918. This assembly met initially in the Liberal Club Hall on Main Street, then moved through several locations. The last temporary quarters were upstairs in the Icelandic Hall on Sargeant Avenue at McGee Street.

In 1928, the Christians purchased property at 603 Arlington Street, and also purchased the Chalmers Church building on Spruce Street and moved it onto the property. The building was renovated and named Ebenezer Gospel Hall. The elders at that time were T.M. McKay, J.H. Taylor, D.R. Ritchie, and W. Payne. Since then, elders have included James Gilmour, Albert Edgar, Geri Thomas, Cyril Taylor, Sam Okomoto, Dan Ritchie, Gerald Hayes, Andy Koropatnick, Lloyd Hayes, Glen Hayes, Ken Hayes, Ernie Schmidt, and Helmut Zimmermann.

In 1965, the assembly changed its name to Arlington Street Gospel Chapel. The assembly has had many forms of youth outreach and has commended several to the Lord’s work in Japan, Belize, Zambia, the U.S., and Canada. About 70 adults and youngsters attend Arlington Street Gospel Chapel at this time.

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Another assembly in Winnipeg was founded by P.J. Rich, A.J. Browning, D. Donaldson, and C. Scarff. These men, with the help of others, conducted Gospel meetings and began a Sunday School for children in 1915. The first meeting for Breaking of Bread occurred in the fall of 1916 at the St. James Gospel Hall on Ferry Road. The assembly grew under the guidance of D. Bell, C. Evans, C. Roach, E. Williams, J. Taylor, and A.D. Lockhart.

In 1925, the assembly moved into new quarters at Inglewood and Ness Avenues, its present location. Sunday School enrollment grew to almost 400 in the early 1930s, with two sessions on Sunday afternoons. Youth activities have been an earmark of the assembly. In 1928, a basement was added. Bram Reed’s meetings there in 1953 are remembered as an especial encouragement to the assembly. In 1961, the hall was completely renovated. A.C. Fear was in leadership in recent years and was an outstanding preacher, ministering throughout the area. The assembly continues today with the name St. James Gospel Chapel and has about 150 adults and children attending.

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In 1922 and 1923, a handful of brethren felt led of God to begin an evangelistic work in the St. Vital district of Winnipeg. In early summer of 1923, they erected a large tent at the corner of Berrydale Avenue and St. Mary’s Road. Gospel meetings were held all through the summer months. The response of the people in the area was great, so the brethren felt a chapel should be built and the work become a permanent one. A lot was donated by Mr. W. Robertson, and with the help and encouragement of brethren such as H.J. Munro, H.C. Scott, T. Kells, C.N. Pogue, and A. McInnis, Grace Chapel was completed and ready for occupancy in the winter of 1923.

From then until the present, this building has been expanded twice because of increased interest and attendance. In 1973, the building was removed from its foundation, a basement poured, and the old building returned to its original place; wings were added to all sides. The building was finished in December 1973 and the dedication service was held in January 1974. Grace Chapel has had much involvement with the development of the work in Fortier.

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Maples Community Church in Winnipeg has its roots in outreach meetings begun in 1975 by Cleve Wyke and Murray Taylor of Arlington Street Gospel Chapel in Winnipeg. The assembly began in 1977, meeting then, as now, at James Nisket Community School. Several elders have served the church, in addition to those mentioned. Maples Community Church has commended a family to serve with HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, and has about 130 adults and youngsters in attendance. In 1999, the Christians began construction of a new building for the assembly at 1640 Leila Avenue.

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Fortier is a small town between Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie. Albert R. Stephenson and David Bell held Gospel meetings in the area in the late 1920s and saw interest and blessing. A weekly meeting was continued by Winnipeg brethren. In 1929, an assembly began in the Fortier/Oakville area, started by H.J. Munro from Grace Chapel in Winnipeg. It had its first meetings in the home of a Mr. Houston. The Christians called their meeting place Fortier Gospel Hall and later Fortier Gospel Chapel. Those in leadership in the assembly over the years include Austin Burnett, Ed Rempel, Ben Rempel, and John Thornton. About 30 adults and children attend Fortier Gospel Chapel.

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Crescent Heights Chapel in Portage la Prairie began in 1980 at its present address of 1745 Saskatchewan Avenue West. A hive-off of the Fortier Gospel Chapel, it was started by persons living closer to Portage la Prairie. Those involved in the beginning of the assembly were the families of William A. Ronald, Ron Moffit, William Gilchrist, D. Garth Ronald, Morley McDonald, Helen Shapansky, N.M. Tilley, Randy Moffit, and Mabel Watson. The elders have been William A. Ronald, Ron Moffit, D. Garth Ronald, and Anthony Barone. About 75 attend Crescent Heights Chapel regularly. Crescent Heights has commended workers to the Lord’s service.

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In 1881, a young Richard Varder arrived in Winnipeg. He had a good knowledge of the Word of God and a strong desire to win souls. A carpenter by trade, he worked until he had accumulated a little money and then used it to carry the Gospel to surrounding towns. Selkirk, about 23 miles north of Winnipeg, especially concerned him. Many of the pioneers and townspeople of Selkirk responded to the Gospel.

Mr. Varder’s efforts and trials were rewarded in about 1886 by the planting of the Selkirk Assembly. From that company went out a number of brethren such as Brandow and Woods, around 1890, to pioneer the Gospel. The Selkirk annual Easter conferences were a feature of the assembly in its early days.

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Richard Varder and Alfred Goff, both from England, were preaching as a team by 1890. Varder had been mentored by Robert Chapman and Henry Dyer, and Alfred Goff was saved under the preaching of Henry Craik. Chapman, Dyer, and Craik were friends and pioneers among the ‘open’ brethren in England, so the two young men had a common bond.

William Monkman was saved in 1890 at Gospel meetings conducted by Richard Varder and Alfred Goff in a home near Selkirk. He immediately invited the two preachers to come north to his district at Balsam Bay on Lake Winnipeg. They came and shortly eight more people professed salvation. These nine, Mr. and Mrs. William Monkman, Mr. and Mrs. John Flett, Mr. and Mrs. Alex Anderson, Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Derby, and Mrs. John Rupert, were baptized in the waters of Lake Winnipeg by Richard Varder and established the Balsam Bay Assembly in June 1890.

The assembly met first in the Flett home, then the Derby home, and then in a local school house at Balsam Bay. This continued until 1910, when the Alex Anderson family moved further north to Victoria Beach. The assembly disbanded for five years until the Andersons returned, and the Remembrance Meetings resumed in their home. George Brandow and Alex Monkman came often to Balsam Bay to preach, and others such as John Gunn of Winnipeg also preached there, but otherwise the only meetings of the assembly were the Remembrance Meetings held on Sunday mornings.

In the 1920s, other additions to the assembly included Norman Thomas, Mr. and Mrs. H.G. Thomas, and Harry Newman. Fifteen were in fellowship in January 1921. Messrs. Brandow and Monkman urged the start of a Bible study among the Christians, and this was done on Thursday evenings in the Anderson home and continued for many years.

In 1921, H.G. Thomas moved his family to Stoney Point, about seven miles south of Balsam Bay, and because travel to Balsam Bay was so difficult, it was agreed that a new Stoney Point Assembly would be started in the Thomas home. The two assemblies maintained a close relationship. Two ladies, Doris Treadway and Dorothy Thomas, one from each assembly, were active in door-to-door evangelism in the 1930s, resulting in the salvation of several who came into fellowship.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, several of the Stoney Point Christians moved to Victoria Beach and elsewhere; the Stoney Point Assembly merged with the Balsam Bay Assembly in 1948. With so many having moved to Victoria Beach, an assembly was begun there, and the Victoria Beach Chapel was constructed in 1950. In 1955, the Victoria Beach assembly was helping the small Loon Straits Assembly, 150 miles further up Lake Winnipeg at Loon Straits.

In 1956, the Balsam Bay group purchased a building and moved it onto property at nearby Grand Marais, calling their building the Grand Marais Gospel Chapel. At that point, there were three assemblies in the area: at Victoria Beach, at Grand Marais, and at nearby Beaconia where the Beaconia Assembly had recently started to gather. In time, meetings were held alternately at each of the three chapels because the Christians were so few and not enough at any one place to operate independently. So, in the late 1980s, the men of the assemblies located and purchased a central site with a building, which they call the Wayside Gospel Chapel near Beaconia. This became the meeting place for all the assembly people meeting in the area after the three assemblies in the area were dissolved. Leadership over the years has been provided by Alex Anderson, William Monkman, William Anderson, Harry Newman, Gordon Thomas, Peter Paulson, and John Thomas. About 60 people attend the Wayside Gospel Chapel today.

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The assembly at Ashfield Gospel Hall is the outgrowth of a work started across the river from Ashfield, in McDonald and St. Andrews, by men who pioneered north of Winnipeg about 1890. The meetings were held in a log house on the riverbank where a godly old sister, “Aunt Kate” Mowat, lived. The Christians were known as the St. Andrews Assembly. The New Year’s Day conferences of those early days are remembered as special times. Adam McDonald was one of the leaders of the assembly. A letter of Alex Marshall written in 1906 speaks of the assembly at St. Andrews.

Since the river had to be crossed by boat in summer or by foot over the ice in winter, the assembly decided to build their Hall across the river at Ashfield as the older folk passed on and later converts made their homes at Ashfield. Here about 20 meet to Remember the Lord.

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Among the early pioneers to Canada was John Rae, who arrived in 1884 from Scotland. Coming to Manitoba to farm, he began winning souls and before long was in full-time service for the Lord. He instructed those won and they began to Remember the Lord in a home in Portage La Prairie, 50 miles west of Winnipeg. After Mr. Rae moved to Brandon in 1888, this group met sporadically, coming together when a preacher was around. In 1904, evangelist Oliver C. Fish moved to Portage and a regularly meeting assembly was formed. The Christians met at that time in a house belonging to Mrs. Craik, on 5th Street N.W. As the group grew, they moved into a room above a tailor shop, then into the tailor shop when it became vacated. Among the stalwarts in the assembly at that time, Miss Matilda Craik, Mrs. Spence, and Mr. Bert Vanstone are remembered.

Around 1920, the assembly moved to the Review Building on Tupper Street North. For baptisms, the Christians went out to the Assiniboine River. The meeting attracted many of the better-known preachers and evangelists during this period, and the assembly was vigorous, with hearty singing and an active Sunday School at which many of the children were saved.

The Review Building was sold in early 1937, and the Christians met for a while in the Oddfellows’ Hall. A house on the corner of First Street and Lorne Avenue came up for a tax sale at about that time; the group bought the lot and tore down the house. They then contracted with Mr. Stewart, who had constructed the Winnipeg Gospel Hall to come build a Hall for them. The Portage La Prairie Gospel Hall was completed that year. The assembly grew and the Hall was later enlarged. The assembly has commended several couples to the foreign field, and a couple to the home front. Portage La Prairie Gospel Hall has about 100 in fellowship and 50 in the Sunday School at this time.

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When John Rae emigrated from Scotland, he settled first at High Bluff, near Portage la Prairie. In 1888, he moved to Brandon, 80 miles west of Portage la Prairie, and started a testimony in his home on Assiniboine Avenue. This was the origin of the Brandon Gospel Hall. Among that company were Miss Henry, Mr. and Mrs. William Turley, Mr. and Mrs. William White, and Miss Reid, all of whom had left the Salvation Army; and Mrs. John Calder who had been with the Presbyterians. In that same year, 1888, John Smith held Gospel meetings and saw a number saved, and some believers gathered to the Lord’s name. Here it was that O.C. Fish, later an evangelist, was saved. Among those who visited Brandon at John Rae’s invitation to preach the Gospel and instruct the saints were Donald Ross, Donald Munro, T. D. W. Muir, and Alex Matthews. The first conference sponsored by Brandon Gospel Hall was held in October 1889.

A letter written by John Rae in 1890 states that more than 30 were in the Brandon Gospel Hall. He mentions five or six small gatherings in the nearby country districts, conversions among Cree Indians, and a new assembly testimony at West Selkirk.

The first meeting place for the assembly was located at 13th Street and Rosser Avenue. The Hall was on the main floor and the Rae family lived upstairs. The second meeting place was at 8th Street and Rosser Avenue, where the meetings were held on the second floor. In 1902, a Gospel Hall was built at 463 - 8th Street. The present Hall was completed in November 1976 at 1412 - 22nd Street. About 25 people attend the meeting today. Brandon Gospel Hall has commended several people full time to the Lord’s work, including William Rae and Oliver C. Fish to ministry in the area, and other workers to Burundi and Zambia.

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Around the turn of the century some souls were saved, and a testimony formed in the Minitonas district, over 200 miles north of Brandon, when William Rae, son of John Rae, preached the Gospel. Later, Messrs. May and Morton visited and strengthened the saints, and the Minitonas Gospel Hall was built. Conferences were held for a number of years. The next generation used a public address system to preach in surrounding towns and villages. In 1954, Messrs. Ronald and Boyle had five weeks of encouraging meetings in a nearby town, followed up by local brethren with weekly Gospel meetings. A new hall was ready in 1955 to allow for expansion of the Sunday school effort and other work.

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Mr. Gilbert Wastle had been praying that the Lord would send someone to preach the Gospel where he lived in the Mayfield district near Portage la Prairie. During a hospital stay in 1929, he told this to a gentleman distributing Gospel literature at the Portage Hospital and a few months later a young man, Russel Ronald, paid a visit to the Wastle home. For two weeks Mr. Ronald visited the neighborhood and held Gospel services at the Mayfield Orange Hall and at the Valley Stream School. During the summer of 1930, two other young men from Portage la Prairie Gospel Hall, James Ronald and Samuel Ray, came to Mayfield, canvassed the neighborhood, and held Sunday afternoon services at the Valley Stream School, and in Sunday evenings did the same at Ellwood School.

They returned in the spring of 1931. When one of the neighbors was saved as a result, the men were encouraged to set up a tent that summer, which seated 100. Evangelists Herbert Harris from Orillia and Robert McCracken from Cleveland came as the Gospel preachers. The two men had meetings in the tent six nights a week for sixteen weeks, till the end of October, living in a little tent in the bush and cooking their meals over an open fire and carrying their water out of Pine Creek.

As the meetings continued, the numbers increased till the tent was full and the yard around the tent as well. Often from 200 to 300 people listened to the message. The local Christians knew they must provide a permanent facility to be used after the evangelists left, and built the Pine Creek Gospel Hall, located eight miles north of Austin, where Pine Creek crosses Highway #34, about 30 miles west of Portage la Prairie. About 50 persons were saved during that summer, and 32 were baptized in October in Pine Creek. The first Remembrance meeting in the new hall was on November 1, 1931.

The next year more souls were saved when Robert Curry joined Mr. McCracken. A growing children’s work eventually created the need for larger quarters, and a larger hall was built in 1963. Then in 1984, since most of the assembly Christians then lived nearer Austin, a lot was purchased there, and the Austin Gospel Hall was built.

Early leadership of the assembly included Osborne Williams, John Lawford, and Ed Ainsworth. Later leadership includes Kyle Knox, Sam Williams, and Garth Knox. About 35 adults and children are in Austin Gospel Hall.

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In about 1900, a small Gospel Hall was erected at Roseisle, a small town south of Portage la Prairie, where for many years there was a thriving assembly, to whose summer conferences came many believers. The assembly at the Roseisle Gospel Hall continues today.

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Binscarth is a town near the western edge of Manitoba. The Binscarth Gospel Hall began there in 1968, the result of evangelistic campaigns in the district from 1961 to 1967, conducted by Robert Boyle of Brandon and James Ronald Sr. of Togo, Saskatchewan. These were assisted by Earl Ritchie, a public school teacher. In 1983, the Christians changed their name to Binscarth Christian Assembly. Leaders in the early years were Jack Woodhouse, Thomas Tibbatts, and Harvey Ronald. Elders since have been include Kevin Boucher, Don Salyn, George Boucher, and Bruce McGregor. About 20 adults and children attend Binscarth Christian Assembly today.

Sources

• Questionnaire responses and other correspondence
• History of the Assembly in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, by Amy Spence, 1987
• History Outline of the Balsam Bay Assembly, by Harry Newman, 1977
• Brandon Gospel Hall, 1888 - 1988
• The (Austin) Gospel Hall Story, by Lyle Knox, about 1985
• St. James Gospel Chapel, Historic Highlights, undated
• History of Arlington Street Gospel Chapel, by H. Zimmermann, undated
• Letters of Interest, June 1955, p. 12