Opening the church doors Plenty to see as places of worship welcome visitors By: Brenda Suderman Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, May. 27, 2023

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This article was published 27/05/2023 (857 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Visitors might be awed by the arched ceilings, stained glass windows and other bits of historic architecture inside Augustine Centre, but church member Jeff Carter can’t wait to show them what’s new and what’s still to be developed inside the Osborne Village building.

During this weekend’s Doors Open Winnipeg, Carter and other volunteer tour guides plan to point out the historic aspects of the 120-year-old limestone structure near the corner of River and Osborne, but they really want to showcase the results of a recent $4.5 million renovation.

“It keeps our mission front and centre and ensuring this historic building is of use in the city,” says Carter of the upgraded and repurposed spaces.

Formerly known as Augustine United Church, the imposing edifice topped by a newly painted tin steeple, now houses about 140 people each weekday at its Oak Table drop-in program and 92 infants, toddlers and preschoolers at SPLASH Child Care.

People taking the hour-long tour will see the bright basement dining room and kitchen space at Oak Table, which also features accessible washrooms, computer and charging stations, a little library in the shape of an oak tree, and wooden doors repurposed from the former guild hall, now home to the day care centre.

They can also visit the seven rooms of the daycare — each designed to reflect on one of the Seven Sacred Teachings — and hear about plans to renovate a lower-level space into a before- and after-school program for 40 children. Carter says the funding is in place for the $600,000 project, which is expected to be completed by September.

And that grand historic worship space? It’s still used weekly for services by the congregation of Augustine United Church, which rents the space from Augustine Centre. Plans are to demolish the current choir loft and build a stage suitable for both worship and performing arts groups, fix the vaulted ceiling, and install a new staircase to the basement, a project estimated to cost $4 million says Carter.

Throughout the planning and the renovation, completed in 2022, the congregation has been faithful to its vision of opening their doors to the neighbourhood and changing with the times, says Rev. Ken Thomas, who leaves the congregation in a few weeks after three years as interim minister.

“I like to tell people there a resilience in these walls,” he says from the middle of the sanctuary.

“If you spend much time in this room, there’s a sense of whatever happens, we keep going.”

That sense of resilience is also evident at Ukrainian Catholic Parish of the Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary at 965 Boyd Ave. Constructed in 1962, the red brick building which seats 650 is the second church at the North End location.

Designed by Victor Deneka, also an architect for Canadian National Railways, the cruciform-shaped sanctuary fuses traditional Ukrainian church design of cupolas and icons with a modern esthetic featured in clean lines, pastel coloured stained-glass, sky-blue paint and a contemporary chandelier with 100 lights at the end of silver rods radiating from a sphere.

“What I like about this church is there are a lot of windows and it’s bright,” says Rev. Michael Kwiatkowski.

“What I like about this church is there are a lot of windows and it’s bright.”–Rev. Michael Kwiatkowski

A neo-Byzantine mosaic of the Virgin Mary by artist Roman Kowal dominates the curved wall behind the altar, carefully constructed so not to damage Kowal’s original painting right behind it. A smaller icon of Mary, painted in 1912, presented to the parish by Bishop Nykyta Budka, the first Ukrainian Catholic bishop in Canada, hangs beside an icon of the bishop completed a century later.

“He brought it to Canada and he had it in his residence until he left and then he presented it to the parish,” explains Kwiatkowski of the icon once belonging to Budka, who died in a Soviet prison camp in 1949 and was named a martyr by Pope John Paul II in 2001.

Over at All Saints Anglican Church on Broadway, tours will focus on the 85 memorial windows in the stone English Gothic-style church, designed and constructed in England by a stained-glass company founded by the 19th century designer William Morris.

But visitors can do more than just see the nearly century-old cruciform building — they can also experience its acoustics by attending one of two Sunday services, says office administrator Joy Peters.

“They can participate, or they can just watch,” she says of the services featuring the choir and music minister Dietrich Bartel on the three-manual pipe organ.

brenda.suderman@freepress.mb.ca

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