A House Not Made With Hands: St. Anne’s Anglican Church

Scott Harris

Friday, February 21, 2025

Painted postcard of a buff-coloured church with a light blue dome and roof.

1909 postcard featuring St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto.

On the morning of Sunday, June 9, 2024 the people of St. Anne’s Anglican Church in Toronto experienced the devastating loss of their church building in a fire. This shock was felt well beyond their parish community: the whole city mourned the loss of St. Anne’s Church, both as a hub of community and service and as a Canadian heritage site. Support came from all across Toronto and throughout Canada, including from Mayor Olivia Chow and Archbishop (now Cardinal) Francis Leo of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto.

Of course, the Church is primarily the people, not the building, but this particular edifice was special. Completed in the early 1900s, it was unique in that it was built in the Byzantine Revival architectural style, based on the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. At the time, it was common for western Christian denominations in Toronto to build churches in the Gothic Revival style, so an Anglican church with this architecture associated with Eastern tradition was a rare gem.

Another component of the aesthetic of St. Anne’s Church was the interior artwork. In the 1920s, J. E. H. MacDonald, founding member of Canada’s own Group of Seven, led a team of artists commissioned to beautify the church. Frederick Varley and Franklin Carmichael, also of the Group of Seven, were part of this project, and the interior murals were the Group’s only known pieces of religious artworks. The murals were beautiful and irreplaceable pieces of Canadian heritage.

Photo of the same church, with the dome burned away revealing a black, charred understructure.

The current remains of the church building. Photo by the author. © Salt + Light Media, 2025.

In his “Letter to the Diocese” the day after the fire, Bishop Andrew Asbil of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto assured the faithful that God’s dwelling place is eternal, rather than in the transitory buildings of this world. He quoted 2 Corinthians 5:1: “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Despite the loss of their precious building, the parish of St. Anne’s Church continues to thrive through their difficult circumstances. Sunday liturgies have moved into the parish hall, and their ministry to the surrounding neighbourhood remains strong. Community Dinners in which parish volunteers provide meals for those in need, which have been a staple of this ministry for years, have continued since the fire. The parish continues to support in St. Anne’s Place, an apartment complex that neighbours the church that provides housing for seniors facing challenges with mental health, addiction, physical health, social isolation, poverty, and homelessness. The destruction of the church building is a tragic deprivation of Canadian cultural and artistic heritage, but it hasn’t stopped this community from continuing their role as part of the Body of Christ in their neighbourhood.