Upper Canada Methodist Meeting Houses

C.W. Jefferys' notes about this picture from The Picture Gallery of Canadian History Volume 2

Most of the early Methodist Meeting Houses were very humble wooden buildings of log or frame and clapboard construction. Few of them survive today. Many succumbed to fire or decay, while others were torn down to make way for larger and more permanent buildings on the same sites. Other early meeting houses are shown on a previous page in this volume.

The Red Meeting House at the extremity of Lundy's Lane west of the battle ground of 1814 was the scene of a dramatic episode six years later. The war had interrupted the connection with the American Church, but in 1820 a Conference was held here which was attended by over a hundred preachers, several of them from the United States. The congregation was too large for the meeting house, and the afternoon meeting was held in an adjoining grove. Twenty candidates were ordained as ministers. Carroll, in his Case and his Contemporaries, states that Elder Case said that some of these young men who had taken part on opposite sides in the battles of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane now knelt together to receive their ordination. At the close of the service they were to be seen "locked in each others' arms and shedding tears of fond affection."

The site of the first Methodist Meeting House in York is now occupied by the towering structure of the Canadian Bank of Commerce building, which also covers the ground where for several years after 1845 the premises of the Toronto Globe were situated.