Tag Archives: Kensington Market

Last Thursday, Toronto’s Anglican Diocesan Council decided to give St. Stephen’s a stay of execution.

The council resolved to let the congregation of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields, a church on College St. at the north end of Kensington Market, stay in their building “on a month-to-month basis until a tenant is found, and subject to the continued cooperation of the parish with the Diocese.” Reactions at the congregation were mixed.

“I had been hoping…that with the sorts of feelings we’ve been getting, the feedback we’d been getting, that we were going to do better than we did,” says Martha Cunningham, a parishioner who has been coordinating efforts to raise support for St. Stephen’s.

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Cause unites activists, politicians in battle with diocese

At the north end of Kensington Market, St. Stephen-in-the-Fields sits across the street from a fire station. Trucks regularly scream, making the 148-year-old Anglican church seem peaceful by comparison. Lately, it is anything but. The parish owes the Anglican diocese about $400,000, and on September 30 it is facing eviction from the building that has been its home for a century and a half. Jeff Nowers, a doctoral student at U of T, has been a member of the congregation for four years.

“We basically just walked in off the street, my girlfriend, who’s now my wife, and I,” says Jeff Nowers. “It’s kind of a church on the margins…a lot of interesting programs, a lot of multicultural dynamics.” Nowers chairs the advisory committee and volunteers at the church’s breakfast program.