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HomeMy WebLinkAbout367"Article copied from the News Advertiser, Wednesday, March 24, 1993, page 17. The following is one in a series of Living History articles by the Ajax Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee. Illustration: Almost as old as Canada itself, St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church remains a constant in Pickering Village. By JUDITH M. GOULIN - PICKERING VILLAGE - St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church has stood as an imposing landmark on Church St. in Pickering Village since Canada was four years old. Victorian Gothic Revival in design, it is constructed of smooth red clay brick from Whitby, and accented with imported buff brick, arranged in a variety of shapes and patterns. Verticality is emphasized in the shape of the stained-glass windows, buttresses, spire and tower. The roof is pierced by dormer windows— extremely rare in a church. Multi-colored, slate tile, which covers the spire, may originally have extended, over the entire roof. The roots of the Catholic community in the Ajax and Pickering area, formerly known as Pickering Township, reach back to the 1830s when many Irish people settled in this area. Famine, was widespread in Ireland, farm land was free in Canada, so even the spectre of the difficult voyage across the Atlantic left families little choice in making their decision to emigrate. Occasionally missionaries or itinerant priests visited Pickering Township to say Mass. Before 1843 the nearest church was St. Paul's at Queen and Power, at that time the eastern edge of Toronto. Sometimes small groups of Catholics would travel by wagon to St. Paul's on a Saturday, then stay overnight to attend Mass on Sunday morning. Their journey was shortened considerably when in 1843 the parish of St. Gregory the Great was founded in Oshawa. Catholics were given a further break in 1848 when St. Gregory's established a mission church in Pickering Township. Known as St. Wilfrid's, it was a small wooden building located on Notion Rd., then the extreme western limit of the village alternately called Pickering and Canton. Apparently not meant to last, the church was already in a dilapidated state by 1870. Today no vestige of the old mission building, remains on the site, but the gravestones of St. Wilfrid's Cemetery stand yet; bearing silent witness to the early Irish parishioners. Around 1860, the population of Pickering Township reached its zenith at 6,000 people. The time had come to establish a permanent parish in the area, both to accommodate a tholic population of 1,000, and to replace the crumbling St. Wilfrid's. The new church was opened in 1871 on a different site and with another name - St. Francis de Sales. Parishioners gave their time and their labor to build it, contributing their skills as carpenters, bricklayers, stonemasons, laborers and teamsters. The total cost of building St. Francis was $7,000, and by 1880 the debt was almost paid off. People were most generous in their collection offerings, with parish picnics and other endeavors providing additional revenue. The growth, decline and subsequent rebirth of St. Francis over the next 70 years mirrors the economic development of Pickering Township as a whole. No sooner was this beautiful church built, when the population began to decline. By 1911 there were only 4,500 people in the township. The rectory which adjoined the north side of the church burned down in 1913, but the rest of the building was undamaged. There was no longer a home for the priest, and the size of the congregation had decreased, so St. Francis once again became a mission Church, open only for Sunday Mass or occasional weddings and funerals, served by priests from a new church in Whitby. Parishioners were strongly opposed to this plan and lobbied the bishop to keep the parish in Pickering Village open, but he silenced his critics by responding. ""We must build the church where the devil is the strongest!"" There was very little growth locally until 1940 when World War II brought the establishment of Defense Industries Ltd., a huge munitions complex, in the area which became Ajax. The sudden and large influx of new people, many Catholics among them, led to the re-establishment of St. Francis de Sales parish in 1942. By 1950 the congregation had grown so large that one church could no longer serve the needs of all the Catholics in Pickering and Ajax, so St. Bernadette's parish was built in Ajax. The exterior appearance of St. Francis Church has changed very little since 1871 . The roof is no longer the original one, a basement entrance has been added and there is a new rectory. The Pickering News reported in 1940 that the original stained-glass windows donated by early parish families with names like McGuire, Harrigan and Kelleher, were completely replaced. In the early days of the parish there were hitching rails and drive sheds across the street to accommodate the many horses which drew buggies and wagons to church. In 1910, 70 of the 84 families in the parish drove horses, but by 1938 when cars had practically replaced horses, the drive sheds were torn down. Many generations of Catholics have come and gone since the church was built. The parish has been divided several times due to the phenomenal growth of the former Pickering Township in recent years, but the impressive St. Francis de Sales Church remains a constant in Pickering Village. "