Series SE2 - Minute books

The first attempts to organize a Unitarian society in Montreal occurred in the 1820s, and involved a number of New Englanders (Samuel Hedge, John Frothingham, Horatio Gates, Ariel Bowman) as well as English and Irish Unitarians (John Molson, P.H. Teulon and many members of the Workman family). These men were active in the commercial life of the city and most retained official membership in one of the established churches. The first Unitarian service was held in 1832, and regular services continued until 1837 but it was not until 1842, under the brief tenure of Rev. Henry Giles, that the constitution of the Christian Unitarian Society of Montreal was signed.

The man who was to set his mark on Unitarianism in Montreal in the 19th century arrived the following year. He was Rev. John Cordner, who was ordained and sent to Canada by the Remonstrant Synod of Ulster, a part of the Non-subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland. For at least the first part of Cordner's ministry, the Montreal Unitarians, as the Canada Presbytery, formed a part of the Remonstrant Synod. Cordner married the sister of the historian Francis Parkman and stayed in Montreal for 36 years.

Mrs. Corder was not the only woman in the congregation to have literary links. All three of the Foster sisters (Elizabeth Cushing, Harriet Cheney and T.D. Foster) were early Canadian writers and contributors to The Literary Garland, of which Elizabeth became editor. Mrs. Cushing and Mrs. Cheney are perhaps best known as the editors and proprietors of the first Canadian children's periodical, The snow Drop.

The men of Cordner's congregation were often in positions of power and influence in the business and political life of the time. William and Thomas Workman, John Frothingham, Benjamin Holmes, John Young, Adam Ferrie, Luther Holton, Harrison Stephens were involved individually and sometimes together in business and commerce of many kinds as well as municipal, provincial and federal politics. Francis Hincks was a member of the Montreal church from 1844 to 1849. Their interest in social improvement is evident. Dr. Frederick Cushing lost his life working among immigrant typhus victims in 1847, William Workman endowed the Montreal Protestant Home of Industry and Refuge, headed a Sanitary Commission and Luther Holton and other Unitarians helped establish the Montreal City and District Savings Bank, and contributed handsomely to numerous educational and charitable causes.

Montreal has had an unbroken line of long ministries: Cordner's successor, William S. Barnes, remained for the next 30 years, introducing the congregation to the ideas of biological evolution and higher criticism of the bible. Other outstanding ministers included Frederick Griffin, Sydney B. Snow, Laurence Clare, Angus Cameron and Leonard Mason. Sydney Snow, just before taking up his new position as minister of the Church of the Messiah in 1920, visited Transylvania to investigate conditions there for the American Unitarian Association. The transfer of that province from Hungary to Romania had resulted in suffering and hardship for many Unitarians, and one result of his trip was that the Church of the Messiah voted to support a Unitarian Church in a Transylvanian village for a minimum three year period.

Interest was stirred in Unitarian ideas in the 1920s when the men's organization, the Laymen's League, organized a series of Sunday evening lectures at the Ritz Carleton Hotel which attracted audiences of 1,000. These were followed by a People's Forum held at the church on Sunday evenings with speakers that included Emmeline Pankhurst, Agnes McPhail and J.S. Woodsworth. One of the first branches of the Unitarian Service Committee was organized at the church in 1945, and a Memorial Society in 1954.

The church has made several efforts to attract members of the French community, but these have ended with the bilingual francophones being absorbed into the main congregation. One group, which called itself the Cercle Unitaire de Langue Francaise, held regular services for a short time and translated a number of CUC pamphlets into French.

In the 1830s the Unitarians met in a temporary chapel at the Union School, then in a converted house on Fortification Lane loaned by Samuel and Elizabeth Hedge. In 1845 the first meeting house was built on Beaver Hall Hill, a plain New England-style building that would seat 450. With a congregation increasing in size and affluence, this building was torn down in 1857 and a new one erected on the same site the following year. The name of the society was changed at this time to the Church of the Messiah.

When fire gutted the roof and interior in 1869 it was once again Molson and his wife Louisa Frothingham. The Unitarians remained rebuilt, this time with a tower and spire donated by J.H.R. here until 1908 when the congregation moved to the beautiful new church on Sherbrooke Street, built in the English Perpendicular style. Fortunately there are many photographs of the the interior, the memorials and the stained glass windows, for many of these were destroyed in the tragic fire of 1987. At present the church is located at the corner of de Maisonneuve and Claremont in Notre-Dame de Grace.