Church of the Ascension, 1911 [Archives of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal]
In a time when the future of hundreds of Quebec churches is threatened, whose maintenance can no longer be assured by their dwindling membership, the successful conversion of the Church of the Ascension while retaining its community vocation is truly a source of inspiration for other architectural recycling projects.
In 1904–1905, the Anglican community of Ville Saint-Louis and Outremont constructed a new church on Park Avenue. The avenue was still under development at the time. Many vacant lots surrounded the churchyard. Design of the church was entrusted to Howard Colton Stone, an American-born architect who was also responsible for several iconic buildings in Old Montreal, including the Bank of Ottawa (édifice Métropole, 4 Notre-Dame Street East), considered Montreal’s first true skyscraper.
What is now the Mile End neighbourhood was, at the time, the home to a great many faith traditions. The Anglican Church was founded by Henry VIII, king of England in the 16th century. Anglican churches[1] are considered catholic in the sense that, like the Roman Catholic Church, they are apostolic, although they began with a split from papal authority. But they are also considered reformed due to their adoption of certain principles of the Protestant Reformation.
Anglicanism took root in what is now Outremont and Mile End toward the end of the 19th century. In 1898, the Montreal Annex Mission (at the time, Montreal Annex was the name given to the western portion of today’s Mile End) and the Outremont Mission merged to create the Ascension Mission. Its first church was constructed on Outremont Avenue. As the number of parishioners increased, the mission became the new Ascension Parish in 1904. After purchasing land on Park Avenue, the parish built a modest house of worship, in Gothic Revival style, which was the usual style for Anglican churches of the time. The original, small Church of the Ascension could seat up to 350 of the faithful. It was enlarged in 1910–1911 to serve a burgeoning community. The side porticos topped by crenelations were added on the Park Avenue façade, and a lateral wing added. This allowed the church’s capacity to double.
The community continued to grow during the 1920s, and then stabilized. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the Ascension Parish merged with other nearby Anglican parishes, due to financial difficulties and a drop in the number of faithful. It was a phenomenon suffered by several of the neighbourhood’s churches, during a general context of increasing secularism in Quebec. The Church of the Ascension became surplus and was put up for sale in 1988.
The Mile End Citizens’ Committee, created in 1982, wishing to preserve the building’s heritage value and community use, contacted the municipal administration in order to propose relocating the local public library in the structure. The library, which was known at the time as the Mile End multi-ethnic library, had been located nearby since 1982, on the ground floor of the building at 5253 avenue du Parc, and was running out of space. The proposal by the citizens’ committee was deemed acceptable by all parties: the Anglican Diocese, the City, the library and neighbourhood residents. As a result, in 1992, the City acquired the Church of the Ascension building.
Thus started a new adventure for the building, its transformation into a library. The City assigned the project to architect Albert Paquette, who worked in what was then the architecture division of the municipal public works department. (He was also the designer of the Insectarium.) First, the City’s property department prepared a technical program and an initial draft statement of intent. In order to obtain the floor area required to house the library, the property department proposed inserting a second floor in the nave space. This additional storey would have rested on a series of central columns to avoid affecting the exterior walls. Albert Paquette immediately rejected this idea since its realization would have considerably altered the building’s integrity. He wanted to preserve the volume of the nave, and especially its beautiful hammerbeam truss roof built of exposed timber. He proposed instead to enlarge the building along the back lane, to the north and south of the chancel. His design was approved by representatives of the library and other municipal decision-makers.
The walls of the chancel and sacristy were demolished and new concrete foundation walls poured to support the weight of the bookshelves. The stained-glass windows were restored by Studio de Verre. The building extension is in clear conformance with the recommendations of the Charter of Venice (adopted in May 1964), which created an international reference for the preservation and restoration of old buildings and objects: the architecture of the extension is both resolutely of its time period and harmoniously integrated into the original building. The presence of the expansive glass wall clearly marks the division between the original building and its addition, but also creates a balanced link between the two volumes. Subsequently, despite later renovations, the layout of the space has remained unchanged in both the administrative and the shelving areas.
On March 12, 2015, the Mile End library was given a new name: Bibliothèque Mordecai-Richler, in honour of the celebrated Jewish writer (1931–2001) who grew up on Saint-Urbain Street (author of such novels as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz; St. Urbain’s Horseman; and Barney’s Version). A former Anglican church is converted into a neighbourhood library due to the efforts of local citizens, and then renamed in honour of a Jewish author: an apt summary of Mile End’s genius loci!
And what became of the Anglican community? It is still active in the neighbourhood through the Mile End Mission, located at 99 Bernard Street West. This charitable organization, in part funded with the interest revenue generated from the sale of the Church of the Ascension, has provided support to the needy (food baskets, clothes) since 1991. Poverty is still a social reality in Mile End, even if it passes unnoticed due to the increasing affluence of many residents.
[1] Including the Episcopal Church in the U.S.
Bibliographic notes
Fiche Église anglicane de l’Ascension, Inventaire des propriétés municipales d’intérêt patrimonial, Ville de Montréal
Comité des citoyens du Mile End / Mile End Citizens’ Committee
Yves Desjardins, Mile End and the McNulty Sisters, Mile End Memories, 27 January 2016
E. Reisner, The Measure of Faith. Annals of the Diocese of Montreal 1760-2000, Toronto, Anglican Book Center Publishing, 2002
[Research and writing: Nathalie Tremblay and Christine Richard (2016) – Translation: Joshua Wolfe (2020) – Revision: Justin Bur]