Missing Methodist Cane Found at Vic U

By Leslie Shepherd

Construction workers were preparing the Birge-Carnegie Building at Victoria University for extensive renovations when they cleaned out a wooden cabinet in a ground floor office. At the back of one of the cupboards they found an old wooden stick decorated with the names of Methodist Church leaders from eastern Ontario.

“It was carefully wrapped in bubble wrap so we thought it might be something important,” said Ronnie Darroch, the site superintendent for Urbacon.

It was indeed important to the United Church of Canada, which had been searching for more than 15 years for the “President’s Cane of the Bay of Quinte Conference” and was delighted to get it back.

According to church archival records, the cane was carved from wood from the Old Bay Hay Church in Adolphustown, Ont., the oldest surviving Methodist church in Canada. It was presented to the Bay of Quinte Conference, an administrative region for the Methodist Church, in 1892.

A cane the United Church of Canada had not seen in 15 years has been found in the Birge-Carnegie Building and returned to the church’s archives.

The Conference engraved the names of its presidents on the staff and used it in ceremonies to install conference presidents at annual meetings until 1924, the year before the Methodist Church joined with Presbyterian and Congregationalist denominations to form the United Church of Canada.

Somehow, the cane arrived at the United Church of Canada archives, which were housed in the BirgeCarnegie Library at Victoria University until 2008. Victoria University is home to Emmanuel College, the largest theological school associated with the United Church of Canada.

The Bay of Quinte Conference borrowed the cane for its annual meeting in Peterborough, Ont., in 2005. But by 2010, it had vanished. That’s when Erin Greeno, the newly appointed archivist for the Central Ontario Conferences, began searching for the cane after receiving inquiries from Methodist historians Rev. J. William Lamb and Rev. Newton Reed.

“For many, the disappearance of the staff was a considerable loss for the history of the Conference and many with a vested interest in that history routinely reopened the mystery in hopes of one day locating the staff,” said Greeno, who now is the digital archives system lead for the United Church of Canada.

But years passed. The Conference dissolved. The historians died and the cane was presumed lost.

Then, as Urbacon, was preparing the BirgeCarnegie Building for renovations, they found the wooden stick in a cabinet in what was once the office of the librarian of the Birge-Carnegie Library.

Earlier this year Vic U archivist Jessica Todd reached out to the United Church of Canada to see if they recognized it.

“As soon as I heard that a ‘cane’ had been found at Birge-Carnegie, I just knew that it had to be Bay of Quinte Conference staff,” said Greeno. “It’s too bad that those many who worked on trying to find the staff are no longer with us. I so desperately wanted to share the news with them.”

The cane has been returned to the United Church, where it is being stored in an archivalquality container in a climate-controlled vault.

Photos: Mayes Rihani, Archives of The United Church of Canada