Saskatchewan anglican
The newspaper of the Dioceses of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon and Qu’Appelle • A Section of the Anglican Journal • March 2015 www.facebook.com/thesaskatchewananglican —
www.issuu.com/thesaskatchewananglican
Church archives: Where the present visits the past
‘More and more we are becoming one’ Anglicans and Roman Catholics celebrate together By Frank Flegel and Canon Michael Jackson
By Darlene Polachic Editor’s note: A version of the article has appeared in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. SASKATOON – An important information source for genealogists has always been church records, which contain data on baptisms and confirmations, marriages and burials. Generally, the records searched for genealogical information pertain to an era prior to the settlement of Western Canada, but, for us here in Western Canada, it is interesting to note that contemporary church archives can also yield valuable information. Jeannette Brandell is the national archivist for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and deals with Lutheran Church records from the 1800s and early 1900s. “The records are basically a collection of old registers, many from churches that have closed,” she says. “The earliest ones date to when Saskatchewan was still the Northwest Territories. “In those days, Lutheran churches were more ethnically divided: German Lutheran, Swedish Lutheran, Finnish Lutheran, and so on. “As people began speaking English, the ethnic congregations tended to amalgamate into one. When that happened, the old church records were forwarded to the Archives. “Sometimes, we won’t have a church’s records because they were stored in someone’s attic or sent to a neighbouring church. “But since 1985, we’ve been asking pastors to pass on all records from other churches to us.” In order to search for a person’s record, Brandell says she needs to know the person’s name and approximate dates and with which church the person was connected. See “ARCHIVES” on page 5
A somber reminder of lives cut short Funeral cards of those who have committed suicide, and candles that have been “lit” in memory of those individuals, hang from a bulletin board in the Synod office of the Diocese of Saskatchewan. The diocese held a two-day event to discuss suicide and supporting those in need of help. Photo — Mary Brown
‘Suicide a permanent solution to a temporary problem’ By Mary Brown PRINCE ALBERT – When one visits the Synod Office in the Diocese of Saskatchewan, one will see an area in the corner of a large bulletin board that is edged in black and covered in funeral cards. These cards are from the funerals of people who have committed suicide. Whenever one of the clergy officiates at a funeral of a person who has taken their life, they are asked to bring the card into the office to put on the bulletin board. There are many cards there, but they are only a small representation of the number of suicides committed every year. In Saskatchewan, 138 suicides were reported in 2011, while five per cent to 25 per cent more were unreported. Suicide is the secondhighest cause of death. There are 1,686,485 people with thoughts of suicide in Canada, many of them high school age and aboriginal. From Jan. 15-16, the Diocese of Saskatchewan held an ASIST
“Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. No problem is so big that we cannot, with God’s help, find a solution and reach out to one another.” (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) workshop. There were 24 people in attendance for the two-day session. Students learned the concepts of PAL (Pathway for Assisting Life). The first step is to explore invitations by observing a person’s actions, words, emotions and physical well-being. They are signs of distress that invite help; anything the person at risk says, does or makes you feel might be an invitation. Accept the invitation, follow your intuition and explore the meaning of things you see and hear. Next is to find a turning point
(a reason to live) and to expand on this and follow through with a plan to keep the person safe from harming themselves. Students participated in roleplay exercises with input from the instructor and other students. This was an intense workshop from which all students felt they benefited. On the first night, a service was held in St. Alban’s Cathedral for the lighting of candles to remember victims of suicide and also for people who are thinking of suicide. At the most recent Diocesan Synod, delegates were given small pictures of a lit candle and asked to “light” the candle in memory of someone who committed suicide. These are the candles beside the funeral cards on the bulletin board. Suicide is a serious health problem worldwide. Any of us or someone we love could be at risk of suicide. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. No problem is so big that we cannot, with God’s help, find a solution and reach out to one another.
REGINA – Every January since 1978, on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, St. Paul’s Cathedral has marked its patronal festival and the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity with a Solemn Eucharist and a guest preacher, usually from another Christian Church. In 2015, the theme of the service was the Anglican-Roman Catholic Covenant between the Diocese of Qu’Appelle and the Archdiocese of Regina, signed at the cathedral four years earlier. For the third year, a Holy Rosary Cathedral delegation, led by Deacon Barry Wood, attended the service as part of the annual exchanges between the two parishes. Holy Rosary parishioner (and Deacon Wood’s spouse) Sheila Wood read the second reading, from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, while Chris and Carol Schimnosky and Joanne Skidmore brought forward the gifts at the offertory. The preacher was Rev. John Meehan, PhD, SJ, president of Campion College in the University of Regina. In his homily, Meehan referred to the Apostle Paul as “a wonderful model for ecumenism.” At Corinth, he said, Paul “reminds the rather divisive Christians that they belong neither to himself nor to Apollos but to Christ. At Ephesus, he tells believers that they share in one body, one spirit, one hope; united by one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Meehan went on to say, “Today, Paul’s example invites us to be agents of reconciliation, a reconciliation that begins at home and moves outward to embrace the fringes, the margins of our society. “How can we, as Christ’s disciples, be part of the solution rather than part of the problem? How can we be agents of reconciliation rather than mere bystanders, or worse still, collaborators in forces that sow division?” See “COVENANT” on page 4