Celebrating Our Past, Exploring Our Future by Geoff Rae
This July 7th marks St. Thomas’ 7th Founders Day, hosted by the Old St. Thomas Church. The event will be held from 3 pm-4 pm and will include some guests and a special guest speaker, MP Karen Vecchio, with a small reception afterward. Rev. Nick Wells explains how the event began: “I’ve been the chaplain for the Old St. Thomas Church for ten years and this event started since my incumbency. There used to be an event, more of a Heritage Day, at Trinity Anglican Church that celebrated the first Eucharist celebrated in the church. We thought to start a Founders Day for the Old St. Thomas Church, yes, marking the beginning of the Anglican Church in St. Thomas, but I wanted to take it a step further than that and expand it into the community. Captain Daniel Rapelje, the founder of St. Thomas, actually has some of his family buried in the Old St. Thomas Church because he set aside two acres plus two rods (an old English measure of distance equal to 16.5 feet) for the setting of a public church and burial ground. I thought we needed to look at a much larger community and make it open to all the religious groups and all the communities in St. Thomas.” “The more communities we can get to participate the better; I would like it to be as diverse as possible, and not just restricted to Anglicans. We want to remember all of our past and also to begin reflecting on our future and pondering what it might be like. Because St. Thomas is changing, and it’s going to continue to change and continue to get more diverse, our service needs to reflect that. Even though we’re honouring our ‘founder,’ Daniel Rapelje, it’s honouring all of our founders. Although different religious and other ethnic groups, at one time themselves pioneers, have come in here over time, they’re not pioneers Congratulations on reaching an incredible 200 years of service! Your steadfast dedication is as impressive as a finely tuned engine. Wishing you continued success and blessings.
anymore because they’ve integrated themselves into the community. This event is a time to allow everybody to speak; each year, I pick somebody in the community to come and speak and talk about what it’s like to be a member of St. Thomas and what their hopes and dreams are for the city.” Rev. Wells notes that the guest speaker will be joined by delegates from the city. Rev. Wells says one thing he enjoys about the event is that he never knows what the chosen speakers will say about their experiences and their visions for the city. “I never ask for their speeches ahead of time,” he says, “But I always ask for a copy afterwards. I’ve been collecting them because, at some time in the future, it would be great to have them published as a collection of what different people thought of the city at different times. Somewhere, sometime in the future, people might look back at those and think, ‘Wow, they were really prescient.’” If you would like to celebrate St. Thomas’ past or be a part of the discussion of what our future may look like, attend Founders Day on July 7th at 3 pm at the Old St. Thomas Church, located at 55 Walnut St., St. Thomas. congratulations Old St. Thomas Church on your 200 th Anniversary
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OLD ST. THOMAS CHURCH 200th ANNIVERSARY GUIDE
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