St Michael's Twin

Whilst on March Break the week before last, Puff and I took Younger and Frodo on a train ride to Hamilton, because Younger wanted to go on a train ride. 

Very close to the station were two churches.

The nearer church is a Baptist Church which has been sold and is apparently going to be made into Condos.  The further church- St Paul's Anglican- looked a little familiar, and when we drew close, we saw a plaque out front that gave a little history of the church, along with the name of the architect: as William Thomas.  Thomas designed many of Toronto's and southern Ontario's more prominent historical buildings, including St Lawrence Hall, Brock's Monument, the Don Jail, and St Michael's Cathedral.  The first reason why this building looks familiar is because it is very nearly a twin to St Michael's- or at least, a smaller sister. Look at these two views:

Pretty close.

It is common for an architect to work on a theme, and to make several works in a similar style.  This one, however, looks like he dusted off some plans.  If he did, then it was St Paul's that was the derivative, as it was built some years after St Michael's. 

Incidentally, the second reason why the church seemed familiar is because it has been used as a location for Murdoch's Mysteries, if any of you have ever watched the show. 

I think I'll go to Doors Open Hamilton in a little over a month and see this place if I can.  I would like to see what they have done with the interior, and if any of the similarities extend inside. 

Toronto, Now and Then

Today, Puff, Younger and Frodo and I headed downtown to St Lawrence Market to get Younger and I some peameal bacon sandwiches from the Carousel bakery.  For those of you who have never tasted this delicacy, you are leading a blighted life, and I pity you.

However, I brought the camera and took a few pictures on our little walk to the market, as we were walking through the older part of the city.  Here's some before, and afters.

Before, around the 1820's or 30's

Now.

 
Good Lord, it has hardly changed.

Then.

Now.

Everyone  who comes to Toronto takes their own version of a shot of the flatiron building, so I thought I would take my own.

Should have moved a little father back.

Typically among the older buildings, they would buy expensive bricks for the facade, and build the sides and the back with whatever they had, from whatever source.  If you look at this photograph of the aftermath of the 1904 fire, you can see people are going through the rubble of the destroyed buildings and collecting bricks. 

 You think "reduce, reuse, recycle" is a modern idea?  Take a number, punks, and get waaaaaay behind these guys.  They were doing it long before your grandparents were born.

The bricks would be reused in buildings later where they wouldn't be seen.  However, as happens, buildings get demolished, revealing the sides of the buildings next to them, and you can see the sides of these buildings, made with the whatever bricks happened to be around.

Just for fun, here's a face from the St Lawrence Hall, once the city hall of Toronto, as well as a concert hall.  Jenny Lind sang here, way back when.

Lastly, because one can never get in too much trouble with the missus, here's a photo of Puff Younger and Frodo, making their way along King.

My Birthday,

Yippee.  Another year closer to death than I was this time last year, which is about the only upside of birthdays.

To stave off the inevitable depression that comes around on this day, I took the day off and headed downtown with my camera, hoping to see... something.  I don't really know what.  I ended up going over some of the old places, some of which I should have avoided like poison.

I wound up stomping around the old U of T area.  Not my alma mater, but I spent a fair amount of time in the area during my post graduate work, as their libraries were superior to the ones at my university.  When you see the old buildings, you can tell that most of the old colleges were founded by pastors, parsons and bishops, as the buildings often look like old churches.

Emmanuel college.

The college is touted as the home of theological studies at the university.  There is supposed to be a chapel in there somewhere.  I thought it would have been in the wing sticking out towards the camera, but that turned out to be a common room.  Somewhere nearby is an ugly statue called "the crucified woman." It's there because... well, just because.

 Victoria College.  Nice place.  Obviously Victorian.  Less church-like than the others.   It resembles nearby Queen's Park (our provincial legislature). There is another chapel inside this one, but the door was locked and I could not get in.

Here's part of the Catholic contribution to the University of Toronto.

More and Fisher house, the residence of St Michael's college, and home of the pontifical medieval studies institute, built on land donated by Sir John Elmsley.  As I recall from the guys I used to know who lived there, the guys living here try and honour the memory of the martyrs for whom the residence was named and the gift of the man who gave of his treasure to bring this place into being by convincing as many coeds as possible to come into their rooms where they may shag them rotten.  Well done, men of St Michael's college.

As a sign of the education, this was on the door of St Michael's college- as series of upcoming talks at nearby St Basil's.  Christ the Clown, Christ the Rebel, Christ the Woman, everything but Christ, Son of God, Lord and Saviour. 

Another sign of the times, photographed through the door:

I don't know if they are seriously asking the question, or if they are asking a rhetorical question, suggesting that there is nothing wrong with it.  The line underneath the question could be read either way, but if they are asking a serious question, I could give them plenty of answers.  One of the things I do not miss after I dropped post graduate studies is smiling through gritted teeth and nodding as some radical feminist spewed whatever nonsense was in vogue at the moment, and having to agree with them, or risked getting charged with sexism and sexual harassment.  "Yes, I see your point and I completely agree.  All f***ing men should have their f***ing balls cut off.  In fact, I insist you cut mine off right now.  Shall I get you some scissors?"

More colleges with chapels.

 Wycliffe Colllege Chapel.  Couldn't get in.

 Trinity College Chapel.  I could get in, which was pleasant, as I consider it the most beautiful chapel in Toronto, Anglican or not.  I wish I was a better photographer.



Entrance to Trinity.  I like the sad and happy faces that flank the door.  I didn't take pictures of the inside, except for the chapel, as I did not want to risk disturbing any classes, or drawing attention to the fact that I really didn't belong there.  But everything inside screams quality and money.  This is where the more genteel Torontonians of yore sent their sons to be educated

The chapel.  It is a combination of starkness and elegance.  Wonderful.  What the picture cannot show is the acoustics.  This place has the best acoustics I know of anywhere in Toronto.  Gregorian chant sounds magnificent in here.  I, ahem, tried it out.  A little.  My voice is not really well suited for chant, unfortunately.  If I were ever to record an album, I would do it here.

 One of the curious things about the chapel is that it has a side chapel within.  This is the Lady's Chapel, used for smaller and more intimate gatherings.

This is the positive organ within the Lady's chapel.  It is small, has only one manual and no pedals.  The three knobs on the top are stop knobs, so this is actually a fairly substantial organ for its size.  The small box on the right houses the blower.

A close up shot of their sanctuary.  The forward table serves as a reminder to me that Catholic churches were not the only ones that suffered unfortunate renovations in the seventies and eighties.

The rear of the chapel.  In the upper shadows one can make out the main organ and the choir loft.  Impressive for such a small space.  As I said: money.

Throughout the U of T are many buildings that look like they were once chapels, but are so no more.  For instance, the two below, one of which is now a bookstore.

 But as I said, so much of the old campus looks ecclesiastical, it is hard to tell.  There is one building that bears a strong resemblance to a cathedral, but it's just a cafeteria.  Then there is this structure near the centre of campus.

It looks like the bell tower of a church, but that is only half right. It is a bell tower- it houses a carillon- but it was raised as a memorial to the students and alumni of the University who died in the wars.

These are the names of the ones who died in the first.

An inscription nearby tries to give meaning and glory to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

I suspect these words were not written by a veteran, or, at least not a front line veteran.  No one who had seen the slaughter on the Western Front thought it a glorious thing to die so. Most of the men who went there came back and never spoke of what they saw.  There is another inscription opposite this one, which was written by a veteran: John McRae.

It's Flanders Fields, if you can't read it.  It's images are calmer and more subdued: sleep and dreams of peace, duty, the passing of the torch, and a fear of betrayal.  Sadly, the man of the First World War were betrayed, not by those who took their place, but by those who sat in command over them  With their blood the young men gave the world a chance to be made anew, but instead, the old men decided to make the old world all over again.  The result was another war, fought by the sons of the men who made it home.  Their names are under the tower itself.

Some on the right.

Some on the left.

As far as I know, the carillon in the tower is now silent.

 I went on to check out one more chapel:  The one at Knox college,

In some ways, it is similar to the Trinity chapel, but the windows were either yellow to begin with, or have gone yellow, and the result is that the chapel is rather dark and dingy inside. 

Like the Trinity chapel, it has a chapel within the chapel, but it was so dark the photo did not turn out at all.  It also has a large organ.  I suppose the Presbyterians had money, too.

By now, I'd had enough of University.  Too many bad associations.  I was young once, and a scholar, among the best of my school.  However, as is so often the case for me, I may be talented, but not talented enough.  I worked hard, but not hard enough.  I walked among these young kids, their lives in front of them, and it just drove home how poorly I have used my talents, and how little I achieved with them.  It was once my place among such as these, but now I was invisible.  If they noticed me at all, they may have thought I was a janitor, or perhaps a hobo who had wandered on to their campus by mistake.  My time had pased.  The university belonged to them, now.  I was an intruder. It was time to leave.

One thing those of you who don't live here should know about Toronto:  this stupid building follows you where ever you go.

So does war.  This was just down the road on University Avenue.

It is a cenotaph raised to dead from the First World War.  The symbolism is important.  The three lions represent the British Empire.  The sleeping lion is the Empire at peace, but the two wakeful lions are the Empire ever vigilant, ready for danger.  The position of the soldier sends the same message: at rest, but gun ready.

He is shown wearing his great coat.  The men often abandoned their great coats when going over the top, as they often became waterlogged and heavy, and weighed the men down.  Generally, they only wore them in the trenches, thus giving them their more common name: trench coats.

I moved on.

 I have no idea what a beer academy is, but I approve.

Here is a statue of St Michael over one of the entrances to St Michael's Hospital.  It think it is interesting to compare it to the new statue placed over the entrance to the Cathedral.

Speaking of the Cathedral, and because I always end up back there, sooner or later, I saw that the new statue of Michael is not the only statue they have raised.

 St Patrick on the right, obviously, and St Joseph, I believe.

 And Sts Peter and Paul, I think.  Paul certainly.  I think that is Peter holding keys.

And St Michael in his new niche.  Really, while this isn't my preferred style of statue, it could have been so very much worse, I will not complain about it.

While at the Cathedral, I took advantage of Confession before Mass, and cleansed my soul of old sins.  Starting off another year is bad enough, no need to do it with the old baggage.  I stayed for Mass. 

I wandered around town some more before turning round and heading home.  I thought about seeing a movie, but there is nothing out there I want to see.  I probably wouldn't enjoyed anything anyway. I could have taken more pictures, but I didn't feel like it anymore.

Another great year underway.  Hoo rah. 

St Michael's, revisited.

Sooner or later, I end up back at St Mike's.

The renovations are continuing and ongoing, so it still does not look its best, but it is beginning to look better.  The scaffolding is down from the tower, and you may now see some of the repaired copper roof, along with the statues that are placed in niches near the top. 

Sadly, I can't make out the figures.  If anyone can chime in, please do. They also look considerably whiter than the rest of the tower, and I am wondering if they are perhaps new.

Speaking of new statues: I took one of the tours that are offered at the Cathedral following the noon Mass on Sundays.  It didn't tell me much that I didn't already know, but among the things that were new to me is that the cathedral will be getting four new statues for the exterior niches.  At first I thought: "Great!"  Then I thought "Wait! What kind of statues?"  The first, the statues of St Michael himself, was blessed and raised to its niche on Tuesday.

When I first saw that statue, my reaction was: "Ummmmm.... St Mike's a girl?"  I've reconsidered a little.  It may be that the artist was trying to give the statue medieval flavour, to go with the neo Gothic style of the cathedral.   I believe the sword is supposed to be a sword of fire (note to artist: flames go up, not down) but it comes off like we have a statue of Captain Feathersword. It seems to me that Michael should look a little... tougher.  I suppose my imagination has been formed in part by my reading of comic books back in the day, so I tend to see Michael, rightly or wrongly, (mostly wrongly) as a superhero.  This is closer to my idea of St Michael than the new statue:

So, with reservations, the statue is not that bad.  I am not going to say I think the statue is great, but, all things considered, I have seen far, far worse statues than the new one. Take for example, the statue of "Michael" near St Michael's college on the University of Toronto grounds.

Put in that perspective, I must say that while the new statue isn't in my preferred style, I can live with it, and in time grow to like it.

The removal of the scaffolding allows us to begin to see the exterior once more.  Every time I go to St Michael's, I see something I haven't noticed before.  The other day, I saw this decoration around a window over the north door.

On the left is a snake, and on the right is... an ugly face.  They are meant to tell a story, but which one I am not sure.  As I mentioned before, a long time ago, our iconography is often used as a mnemonic aid to remind the viewer of a story.  So there is a story here.  I just don't know which one.

The interior is pretty much as it has been for the last year or so.  The narthex has yet to be replastered. They have not yet begun to replace the choir loft or the organ, and the back looks rough with the empty spaces.  I was told something interesting about the organ during the tour I mentioned earlier:  I had been told we would be getting a Casavant from a church that closed in Quebec.  At the Cathedral, they told me they would be getting a phoenix organ to replace the old Warren.  Phoenix makes mainly electronic organs, and some electronic pipe hybrids, which seems to be what may be planned at this time.   From the Phoenix website:

The Phoenix console, located in the chancel, will also eventually switch to play the planned new pipe organ to be located in the balcony. Phoenix Organs will be collaborating with the pipe organ company to be named at a later date.  

I wonder how current that information is.  We could be getting a Frankenorgan (electronic pipe hybrid).  Also, I had heard they were going to rebuild the choir loft.  If so, why keep the organ console near the sanctuary, away from the choir and the pipes themselves?  Confusing.

My camera does not work well indoors, (and I've mentioned before that I am a rotten photographer) but I managed a so so picture of the tabernacle.

The spire over the tabernacle is a fragment of the original high altar.

Sadly, almost everything in the above photograph has been dismantled and lost.  The ornate pulpit is long gone.  The bishop's chair has vanished to no one knows where. Other pieces, such as the spire, were taken down and preserved.  There are a few picture frames at the back of the church made from fragments of the high altar.  The niche around the statue of Mary over the Marian Altar is similarly another fragment of the high altar.  The spire was the first part of the original high altar to be removed, taken down because it blocked the view of the magnificent stained glass window long before the wrecking balls of the 70's and 80's came into play.  In that era, the remainder of the high altar was dismantled, and a new altar, made of poured concrete, was put in place.  Thankfully, the concrete block was removed and a more suitable altar was installed, but St. Michael's still has no high altar, and the tabernacle is shunted off to one side.

St Michael's Cathedral has been a site of renewed interest in the last few days, because of it's position in the new pastoral plan for the diocese.  The fifth and final point of the plan is the renewal of the Cathedral itself.  I'll quote it at some length.  The rest of it is to be found here.

IV – 5. The Cathedral as Sign of Our Mission "Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." – Ephesians 2:20-22

The four previous core directions - parish life, vocations, Catholic outreach and evangelization - come to a focal point and find visible expression in our fifth and final core direction: St. Michael’s Cathedral as Sign of Our Mission.

The Cathedral, the seat of the archbishop and mother church of the Archdiocese of Toronto, connects every Catholic in the archdiocese, and gathers every pastoral and apostolic work under the heavenly patronage of the great defender of the faithful in the struggles of life, the archangel Michael. We need his intercession more than ever.

The Cathedral and its surroundings, the "Cathedral Block", are a visible symbol of pastoral communion within the archdiocese and apostolic evangelization in our secular society. The Cathedral should more fully become a beautiful icon, a gathering place where those living in and visiting the archdiocese are welcomed to enter and to be touched by the sacred, echoing the meaning of the name St. Michael: "Who is like God". Through an ongoing commitment to good stewardship, the physical restoration of the Cathedral will become the foundation for its spiritual revitalization. Building on its presence at the heart of the diocese, we can transform it into a place of pilgrimage, a centre for the liturgical life of the archdiocese and a place for the witness of the Catholic faith – a vibrant presence in a vibrant city.

We have identified four desired outcomes/goals for this core direction of the Pastoral Plan.

(i) Restore and Enhance the Architectural Beauty of St. Michael’s Cathedral

(ii) Develop the Cathedral & "Cathedral Block" into a Place of Gathering, Worship and Outreach

(iii) Collaborate with the Catholic School Board & St. Michael’s Choir School

(iv) Revitalize the Cathedral & Cathedral Block as a "Centre of Evangelization"

 What this will mean in practical terms remains to be seen.  But, one way or another, St Michael's will be with us for some time to come.

UPDATE:  In a case of blatantly Schtealing my Schtick, the Archdiocese of Toronto Blogsite has a post up- posted after mine, I might add- wherein, among other things, they detail the work being done on the Cathedral. Should I be insulted, flattered, or should I ust sigh and admit it is unlikely they know I exist?