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==History==
This assembly officially began in 1951, a year after Jean-Paul Berney arrived from SwiterzerlandSwitzerland. It first met at 156 rue Crémazie, coin Candiac, then at 54 rue Sainte-Ursule before moving on in 1952 to a location on rue Cartier and two years later, in May of 1954, to 610 rue Belvédère. Meetings were held in the basement which had been finished off while the upper, unfinished floor was home to Jean Heidman and Mabel Quinlan.
Personality conflicts between Paul Boëda and Harry McCready together with Alphonse Lacombe’s reading McCready out of the assembly and, for all practical purposes, marginalizing Jean-Paul Berney, both contributed to a division in the assembly as of in December 1954. Mr. Berney resigned his “post and duties as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Christian Assembly of Quebec” as of February 8, 1955. The brethren Boëda and Lacombe had come from or been sent by the Cap to deal with the situation. With their arrival came a certain fear of possible violence.
The immediate issue appears to have been serious differences of opinion in the group as to the financial straits in which they had placed themselves for the construction of the new Chapelle Évangélique on rue Belvédère begun in 1953. Understandably, the one from whom they had borrowed a large sum of money ($30,000) was likely calling the shots and all were not pleased. According to Mr. Berney, Mr. Henry Heidman, Jean Heidman’s father, one who was involved in the discussions in Quebec City, was a significant source of finances. The Junction Assembly in Toronto was also involved in the project.
According to Dr. Hill, in his letter to John Spreeman (1/18/55), “they went ahead with the building of the chapel before they were all of one mind about the way the work was to be carried on.” I take this to mean the operation of the assembly rather than the construction project itself. “Everyone in the assembly there was quite conscious of the differences which existed among them.”
Then, too, the matter of women speaking out in the meetings, assumedly business meetings, of the assembly was also an irritant. According to McCready (1/31/55), the assembly was split in half, with the greater part being ousted from the hall. This, he said, was caused by a few domineering brethren and sisters. I would suspect that either Jean Heidman or Mabel Quinlin or both may have been involved here. Both of these valuable workers left the assemblies sometime after 1955 to work with the C&MA churches in Quebec.
An underlying issue was clearly differences of opinion between the “tights” and the “opens”, with the ousted ones being the “tights”. In a letter from Spreeman to Hill (2/4/55) we learn that financial matters did indeed play a role in the division which came at the end of 1954. According to a later communiqué (2/24/55), “the situation there was most regrettable due to the unwise way in which the construction was undertaken.”
