Welcome to the website!

This is a compact introduction to the history of the Anglican Church in Canada. If you decide to follow all the links, though, it will take you a while to get through it !

It's a very abbreviated version of my book Anglicans in Canada: Controversies and Identity in Historical Perspective (University of Illinois Press, 2004).   Like the book, this website provides narrative introductions to several significant themes in Canadian Anglican history, along with excerpts from important historical documents. But the themes in the book are a bit different from the ones chosen here.

Information about the author

I'm Alan Hayes, and I teach Church history at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto. You can follow this link to my professional homepage. From there you can also find links to my other websites, including one on early Christianity and one on the history of Anglicanism.

Using the website

You can begin at the beginning and work through. You do this by clicking on the arrows at the top of the column to the left.

Or you can go directly to a topic that interests you:

Missions. English missionary societies were supporting Canadian Anglicans from the early 1700s until World War II!

Loyalism. Canadian Anglicanism grew up among loyalists in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and the influence remains to this day.

The Establishment ideal. Early Anglican leaders such as Jacob Mountain and John Strachan wanted a legal establishment of  the Church of England in Canada. They failed.  But can we still discern remnants of their views?

Moving towards self-determination. It's not that Canadian Anglicans really wanted to govern themselves, but English politics, English economics, and English legal cases forced them into it.

Party quarrels. The "church party" and the "evangelical party" both claimed to represent true Anglicanism, and their disagreements were often bitter, especially from about 1855 to 1900.  

First Nations. Anglican missions to the First Nations, and the Indian residential schools, were the biggest item on the Church's mission budget, although after the 1880s the federal government paid the piper and called the tune.  

Modernity. The modern world, with its scientific method, bureaucratic administration, and social compartmentalization, threatened traditional Christian values.  What did Anglican thinkers say about it?

Women. Women were always influential in the Church, but until the 1970s men generally succeeded in keeping their profile low.