St. Michael's Anglican Church

St. Michael’s stands on the south side of Fennell Avenue East at High Street, east of Upper Ottawa Street, on the Mountain; its 60-foot bell tower of poured concrete rises behind the trees. The city’s heritage inventory records that in the summer of 1955 Bishop Walter Bagnall asked Ralph McKim, then a divinity student at Trinity College in Toronto, to canvass the east Mountain for a new parish. Its first service was held in the gymnasium of Hampton Heights Public School on 16 October 1955, and the parish was named St. Michael’s in January 1956.

The congregation worshipped in a parish hall from 1957 until the present church, designed by McDonnell & Lenz, was dedicated on 8 March 1964; Ontario Premier John Robarts had laid its cornerstone on 7 November 1963. The church is built on a plan of intersecting circles, with its seats in a semicircle; the parish says the oval nave seats 300. A large wooden cross from the closed Church of St. Augustine of Canterbury hangs above the altar, and three stained-glass windows from St. James the Apostle on Ottawa Street, which closed in 2004, are set in lit boxes on the interior walls. When St. George’s Anglican Church in Hannon closed in 1971, its congregation joined St. Michael’s.

On Sundays a said Eucharist is held at 8:00 a.m. and a Choral Eucharist at 10:00, with a single service at 9:00 a.m. in summer. The rector is the Reverend Nicola Zhang.

What to expect

The 8:00 service is a full communion service without music; at the 10:00 service the choir sings and the music director accompanies the hymns. During the 10:00 service a kids' zone in the church, with activity sheets on the day's readings, quiet toys and a volunteer when one is available, is open from the start of the service until the Peace, and a nursery area gives babies and toddlers a place to play or sleep. The parking lot is behind the church, and the church doors open off the courtyard.

What Anglicans believe and how they worship