Anglican bishop brought ‘cohesiveness to diocese’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/09/2010 (5826 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a child, Patrick Lee attended the Anglican church in Manitoba.

More than four decades after he joined the Anglican clergy — and at an age when many people retire — he rose to lead the local church as Bishop of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land in 1994.

Lee headed the diocese until finally retiring for good in 2000.

Lee died on Sunday in Perth, Ont. He was 79.

Rt. Rev. Donald Phillips, who succeeded Lee, said Lee came in at a crucial time in the life of the church.

“He played a very key role in bringing unity and cohesiveness to the diocese as it looked to the 21st century,” Phillips said on Tuesday.

“He was very much loved here. We’ve known for months that he was dying, but it was very sad when he did.”

Phillips said Lee was “a very humble man.”

“He had a good sense of humour, too. He was strong and he knew when to draw the line, but he was always kind.”

Lee was born in Winnipeg in 1931 and raised in Gilbert Plains.

He told the Free Press in 1999, that he was a high school teacher for a year after graduating from St. John’s College when he was “pulled” to the church.

“It’s not a choice,” Lee said.

“It’s a sense you are being called. I couldn’t fight it anymore.”

The first few years of Lee’s religious career saw him at a parish in the Interlake, Windsor Park and Portage la Prairie. He then was elected dean of the Diocese of Cariboo and then Kamloops, B.C.

Lee and his wife Mary sent six years in Uganda during the reign of Milton Obote, whose government killed hundreds of thousands of people. The couple was held overnight at gunpoint in the bush at one point and another time was pinned against a wall while a battle waged around them.

“We didn’t have to apologize for the depth of our faith,” Lee said of those years. “We found strength and peace.”

Shortly after returning to Winnipeg, Lee was preparing to retire from the clergy when he was nominated and elected in 1994 as bishop for the diocese, which takes in a large section of southern Manitoba from the U.S border north to the Interlake, to the Pembina Hills in the west to Beausejour in the east. Lee’s funeral service is being held in Perth on Friday at St. James Anglican Church, but he will be buried after a later funeral service in Winnipeg.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

 

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