Parish Profile: The Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist

Author: Matthew Bowman

Founded in 1820 by the Rev. John West, the Red River Mission (later the Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist) is situated on the banks of the Red River within the bounds of the 1817 Selkirk Treaty. As a mission house of the Church Missionary Society, it served a diverse population of Hudson’s Bay Company settlers and local Indigenous nations. A Red River log frame building was erected in 1822 and narrowly escaped destruction in the great flood of 1826. The second building, a stone structure completed in 1833, was badly damaged in the flood of 1852 but was salvaged using wooden supports, and in 1853 was consecrated the first cathedral of the fledgling Diocese of Rupert’s Land by its first bishop, the Rt. Rev. David Anderson. The present Late Gothic Revival building was completed in 1926 and incorporates stone from both the 1833 structure and the third church, completed in 1862.

Demographically, most of our parish is made up of European settlers along with significant numbers of people from BIPOC communities, with nearly half of the congregation living within the geographical parish bounded by Inkster, McPhillips, and the CP rail line. Our Cathedral’s worshipping community has shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 25-35% of the congregation currently participating in Sunday worship via a YouTube live stream.

As a via media (middle way) Anglican parish worship is drawn primarily from the Book of Alternative Services and Common Praise; seeking to both glorify God and provide strength for the lives of Christian disciples by combining the best elements of the Anglican liturgical tradition with all the excellence the community can muster.

Outreach and building community connections outside its walls are central to our Cathedral community’s identity. Its foundational and ongoing involvement in the Kapabamayak Achaak (“Wandering Spirit”) Healing Forest Winnipeg—dedicated both to the memory of victims of the Residential School system and to being a place of learning on the land in the good way of healing and reconciliation—is emblematic of the Cathedral community’s public commitment to reconciliation and building right relations. Likewise, our Cathedral community is dedicated to being a place of welcome for the wider Winnipeg community, recently hosting Platinum Jubilee and Thanksgiving services in celebration and memory of the late Queen.

Closer to home, the Cathedral community is committed to supporting the ongoing life and ministry of the diocese by slowly growing its financial support and offering a gathering place for the wider diocesan community to gather and worship at significant occasions in our common life as the body of Christ in this time and in this place.

Humphrey Lloyd Hime, St. John’s Church (Church of England), two miles below Fort

Garry, Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition, 1858. Archives of Manitoba, P8290/7.