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Every story needs a beginning, and Oakville’s story starts here, with a creek. Without the creek, there would have been no Oakville. Survival of life depends on water; without it, nothing could live. And water provided not only for the natural world but also humanity. To drink, wash, and travel through the dense backwater than was Ontario. And it also provided the earliest power of the early industries. Formed during the last great ice age and the retreat of the same glacier that began the great lakes and the Niagara Escarpment, the nameless creek meandered from the escarpment into one of the many lakes formed.Read More →

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I first visited the community of Oakville as part of a tour of Sheridan College. Sheridan was among the colleges I had applied to in my final year in High School. I only chose two colleges, Mohawk and Sheridan, but chose programs at both Davis Campus in Brampton and the Trafalgar Campus in Oakville. Ultimately, I attended the Trafalgar Road Campus and started there in 2002. That same year I attended a PYPS (Presbyterian Young People’s Society) event at Knox Presbyterian Church in downtown Oakville, getting my first taste of the town’s historic core. But it wasn’t until I started working full-time at Sheridan afterRead More →

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Located in the historic village of Campbellville, St. David’s Presbyterian Church is unique in that its design takes from several different architectural styles and is named (after a fashion) for the person who donated the land it sits upon. Presbyterian worship in the village of Campbellville started in 1864 when members of the Nassagaweya Congregation could not make the trek to the Nassagaweya Church in Haltonville. At this time, such a journey was a bit of an undertaking, and the area had an unsavoury reputation. The Campbellville congregation was formally recognised as a mission station of the Nassagaweya congregation in 1869 and made a two-pointRead More →

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The Parish of the Sacred Heart, or properly Sacré-Coeur, is a unique one in the project. Like all Roman Catholic Parishes, this parish can trace itself back to St. Peter’s Mission Church. But this parish is relatively new, one of several French language parishes established in the 1960s. But the building itself traces itself to the first Roman Catholic Parish in Georgetown. The early Roman Catholics in Georgetown would be forced to travel to St. Peter’s Church to attend mass; At the same time, these services were a bit irregular; the faithful would make the long journey to receive communion, give confession, and celebrate mass.Read More →

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Suppose this particular entry seems a little longer and more detailed. In that case, it is because, as a member of Knox Milton, I have far more accessible access to my congregation, plus the history has been well documented and easily accessed. This is the congregation that I grew up in and continue to serve with today! The construction of churches within the village of Milton did not start until the 1840s, when several large plots of land were subdivided and sold off into parcels. The first church to be planted within Milton’s downtown was St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in 1848, which was connected toRead More →

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Despite being Ontario’s fastest-growing town, Milton was once a rural backwater, a milling town with a notable agricultural background. This made it the ideal spot for many of the Methodist tradition to find themselves. St. Paul’s reminds me of that connection to the past and a church I have my connection to, attending the Milton Community Nursery School before elementary school. The first Methodist circuit riders came into Milton in 1827, Rev Anson Greene holding services at the farm of Elizabeth Harrison. The Harrisons were among the earliest settlers of Milton, arriving even before Jasper Martin. The Milton congregation remained at the Harrison farm andRead More →

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Sitting high above the downtown of Milton sits a squat, grey stone structure that would look better as a small country church in England than here in Ontario. You may also think that this was the oldest church in town, and while it is among the early congregations downtown, it is not the oldest. Saddlebag preachers were not only a Methodist means of holding services; the Anglican Church also employed missionary or itinerant ministers who travelled through rural areas to have services outside the major urban areas. These ministers began to hold services in Milton in 1844. As the town grew, attending these home-based servicesRead More →

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Sitting outside of downtown, St. George’s Anglican Church looks as if it has been transplanted from the English countryside. With a small churchyard and a scattering of graves, this historic parish is among the earliest churches within the community of Georgetown. Anglican priests had been calling in Georgetown since the 1840s. These saddlebag preachers rode a circuit, often holding services in family homes or schoolhouses. These services suited the areas of Ontario that were far from the urban centres. As the community grew, a section of land was purchased on Norval Road (Guelph Street) to build a meeting house and a burial ground. A simpleRead More →

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Some still exist when it comes to the former villages that occupied the stretch of Dundas on the former northern edge of Oakville. The village of Sixteen Hollow (alternatively Proudfoot Hollow) has vanished save for an oddly named Presbyterian Church, Knox Sixteen. George Chalmer’s established the small community in the late 1820s, a mill and tavern forming the community’s core. Being made up mainly of those who traced their heritage to Scotland, they brought with them the Presbyterian Church. These early settlers would worship at home with a saddlebag preacher, or when the Presbyterians established a congregation in Oakville would travel south when they wereRead More →

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A small white frame church is easy to miss; easier still is dismissing the building as a new build designed to match an older structure. But the small white church sitting on the western side of Bronte Road is original and an active church. When William Peacock first settled in the village of Palermo in 1832, at this point, a Methodist congregation was already well established. Peacock, an Anglican, would need to travel further afield to worship at a familiar church. But as the population grew, William convinced the rector at St. Luke’s in Wellington Centre to come to Palermo to celebrate mass, the firstRead More →