Fifty United Church

Fifty United Church stands on Highway 8 in Winona, in the former Saltfleet Township. The congregation traces its beginnings to 1796, when a few United Empire Loyalist refugee families who had settled near Fifty Mile Creek began meeting weekly for worship with the help of a Methodist circuit rider and became known as ‘the Meeting by the Fifty’. It was a congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church and became Fifty United Church at church union in 1925.

The City’s heritage inventory records that land for a church and the adjoining cemetery was deeded to the congregation’s trustees in 1820, and that the present brick church, built in the Gothic style to seat 400, was dedicated on 14 February 1869; the inventory lists it as a designated heritage property. The congregation adds that the brick church replaced a wooden one destroyed by fire, that a steeple and chimes were added in 1967 as a Centennial project, and that the attached hall with its Upper Room and Lower Hall was built in the 1920s.

Sunday worship is at 10:30 a.m., and at 10:00 a.m. in summer, led by the Reverend Christina Paradela, the congregation’s intentional interim minister. Since September 2025 a transition team has been helping the congregation, which numbers about 215 people, discover its best direction; the church expects that work to continue until April 2027, and in May 2026 it reported that members expect their future to look different.

What to expect

Services follow the structure of a traditional United Church service and often welcome discussion from the congregation. The music mixes traditional hymns, modern compositions and original music by the church's director of music and organist, played on an organ with chimes; a seasonal choir, open to all, joins at Easter and Christmas. Sunday School activities are available for children aged 4 to 12.

What United Church members believe and how they worship