by W. Lloyd G. Williams
The history of the Society of Friends in what is now Canada goes back to the period just after the American Revolution. In fact, although Quakerism in Canada has gained to some extent, particularly in this century, by immigration from England and, to a lesser extent from the continent of Europe, it is largely an offshoot of American Quakerism. Immigration of a small body of Quakers from the United States to the Maritime Provinces was a result of the Revolution, but the main body of Friends in Canada has as its origin immigration from the United States to Ontario, which is still the principal centre in Canada. This immigration was in the main a part of the migration toward the West in search of cheap land and better material opportunities. It owed little to the United Empire Loyalist migration, except in the Maritime Provinces, where it did not take permanent root.
Characteristically, the first Meetings in the Province of Quebec, of which Stanley Zielinski has written an interesting account, based on thorough research, were in the Eastern Townships near the American border and derived from immigration from the New England states. The only record I know of Friends visiting Montreal in the early days was when Stephen Grellet (Étienne de Grellet) in 1804 approached Montreal through La Prairie, where he addressed a meeting, composed partly of English Canadians and partly of French Canadians, first in English and then in French. He then crossed over to Montreal. “I visited there”, he writes, “several pious persons and, in one of their nunneries I had much openness with some of the nuns, especially their superior. I had also a meeting in that city.” This is the only meeting of which we have record, held according to the manner of Friends, in Montreal before 1907, although there is a rumour of an earlier organized Meeting.
In 1907, a few English Friends, of whom Alfred Stansfield, long professor of Metallurgy at McGill University was one, organized a Meeting of which we possess the record book. Presumably most of these moved on to the United States and other parts of Canada. At any rate, the movement soon expired.
The present Meeting began in the autumn of 1929, and was initiated by Eugene A. Forsey, a young graduate of Oxford University, who joined the McGill Department of Economics and Political Science in that year, and a few other Friends, of whom the present writer, who joined the Department of Mathematics at McGill some years earlier, was one. Meetings were at first held only once monthly and took place in the Central Y.M.C.A. The movement gradually gained strength and after some years we met each Sunday, always in borrowed rooms until December 15, 1963, when we met for the first time in our own home at 2196 St. Luke Street. We were organized and attained the status of a Monthly Meeting under the œgis of Pelham Half-Year Meeting of Genesee Yearly Meeting in 1942. Thus we have been meeting as a Friends group for 35 years and as an organized Meeting for 21 years.
We recall a survivor of the French Revolution, who, when he was asked what he did during those years, replied, “I survived!” Perhaps this is all that can be said of our small group in Montreal, but, as our new home and our list of some forty resident members and attenders, including children, it is not quite all. More important even than our new home, in this possession of which we rejoice, is the contribution which this humble undertaking has made to the lives of some of us who are still here and of others now far away.
Our first clerk, John Henry Hobart, in his interesting book Quaker by Convincement writes:
Now I was learning what an immense contribution the Society of Friends could itself make to the effectiveness of the individual. The wonderful thing is that a person can give his all to such a group and emerge as a stronger individual, richer in all those attributes of the spirit of which he has given most generously.
I regard the time I served as clerk to the Montreal Friends Meeting from its inception in 1942 until I left Montreal in 1947 to work with the American Friends Service Committee as the most rewarding years of my life.
The loss of our Friends, John and Enid Hobart, was a great blow to our Meeting and there was a period when we might have asked whether it could survive. I clearly remember a spring Sunday, when we were meeting in the Presbyterian College, when I sat for an hour alone, and when, on leaving I met the Gordielfs arriving from across the border in New York State, an hour late because of the change of time which did not take place in the United States until later.
There was a period when the average attendance must have been about half a dozen. If our weekly Meeting today with an average attendance of perhaps twenty-five seems small to newcomers, to us oldtimers it seems uncomfortably large.
A period of great interest to us was that from 1945 to 1949, when a few young refugees who had got in touch with Friends while in camps in the Eastern Townships came to us. Among these I recall two who graduated from McGill:
- Kaspar Naegele, now dean and professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, and Thomas Cassirer, now professor of French at Smith College.
- Another attender of about this period was John Karefa-Smart, a native African, outstandingly tall and handsome, who graduated at McGill in medicine and is now foreign minister in the Government of Sierra Leone as well as a contributor to the funds which have made our new Friends House possible.
A venture which we undertook with considerable success was the holding of a series of lectures each winter. There were usually five lectures, three given by non-Friends and two by Friends. With financial help from the Friends General Conference and interested people in the city, we carried these on for several years. Among Friends who came were:
- Rufus M. Jones
- Roscoe Pound
- Brand Blanshard
- Henry J. Cadbury
- Paul S. Cadbury
- Frank Aydelotte
- Anna Brinton and John Henry Hobart, who returned to us to describe the experiment in which he was concerned, in introducing white students into Lincoln University, a Negro university.
I recall one amusing incident. A lady who was somewhat late in arriving at the lecture, which was perhaps excusable as the lecturer was her husband, as she ascended the stairs was met by a man coming down who excitedly warned her that there was a man up there preaching “rank pacifism.” It was perhaps not surprising as the lecturer was Henry Cadbury.
Of non-Friends who came to us during those years, I recall particularly:
- Professor Hocking of Harvard, the well-known philosopher;
- two Roman Catholics, one a leader in the cooperative movement in Nova Scotia and the other president of Hunter College in New York;
- Professor Charles Cochrane of the University of Toronto, author of the great work, Christianity and Classical Culture;
- Louis Finkelstein, president of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
Dr. Finkelstein delivered an interesting and inspiring lecture on the Sadducees, in spite of a very light supper. The reason for the light supper, perhaps more amusing to others than to Dr. Finkelstein, was our ignorance of the dietary laws to which he was subject: the only thing on our menu which he could eat, and that at special order, was Post Toasties.
Our new home we could not have acquired without the generous aid of Friends and others outside Montreal. We mention especially Toronto Monthly Meeting, the Friends General Conference, English Friends’ contribution through several Quaker trusts including the Cadbury Trusts in Birmingham. It is worthy of note that we have received contributions not only from various parts of Canada, England and the United States, but even from Australia and Africa. To all these generous contributors we record our grateful thanks.
We owe much to Jonas Tichermann of the School of Architecture of McGill University for his inspiring enthusiasm and taste in advising as with regard to all the details of remodeling, decorating and furnishing the Centre. Without his advice and help the Centre would not be at all what it has become.
Valiant work of the hardest kind has been contributed by Elizabeth Taylor Rossinger, James and Stephanie Logan, Walberg Hock, Norman Crockett and others, while the Blackies have, by their industry and knowledge, contributed to beautifying the exterior of Friends House.
A number of our members and attenders, especially university students, have left for other parts of Canada, the United States or elsewhere. But as some have left others have joined us and we have enjoyed a steady if slow growth. Our oldest members in length of membership and in years are Jean Jackson and Lloyd Williams. Others who have come later and happily are still with us are
- André and Elizabeth Taylor Rossinger
- James and Stephanie Logan
- Ann Silver Allee
- Stanley and Joyce Jones
- Stanley and Miwa Zielinski
- Conrad and Elfriede Blackie
- Jack and Barbara Brown
- Dr. Francis McNaughton
- Norman and Nancy Chance
- Anthony Meech and Madge Alden.
Some of those who have left us but whom we remember with affection are:
- Elizabeth Murray Cornel
- Thos. Murray and Helen Cunningham
- Barbara Bachovzeff
- Dr. C. A. McConkey
- Bernhard and Pamela Klausener (now directors of a Friends Centre in East Pakistan)
- Hiroko Sakamoto, who has returned with his family to Japan
- Philip and Janet Martin
- Sidney Lucas
- Neil Last
- Pernmella Clark
- Dr. Nelda Ogden Dinen, now practicing medicine in the United States
- Fred Sykes and Edward Bell
We have not only survived, but have laid a foundation which will, we hope, ensure the survival of our Meeting into the indefinite future. Our history is really in the future, rather than in the past.
Part 2: Friends in the Eastern Townships