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Trinity Anglican Church
Port Burwell
ON
NOJ 1T0
- Anglican Churches in Port Burwell, ON
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Who we are
Welcome
Trinity-Port Burwell – a welcoming congregation, an historic church, a busy parish hall, a peaceful cemetery. Weekly Sunday Services, Sunday School, Study Groups, Special Services, Community Events. Our Faith in Action through worship, prayer, hospitality, and community Service.
We look forward to meeting you in person!
Trinity-Port Burwell – a welcoming congregation, an historic church, a busy parish hall, a peaceful cemetery. Weekly Sunday Services, Sunday School, Study Groups, Special Services, Community Events. Our Faith in Action through worship, prayer, hospitality, and community Service.
We look forward to meeting you in person!
Street Address
Church Pastor
Rev. Kendall Reimer-Johnson
Pastor
25 Pitt St
Port Burwell,
ON
NOJ 1T0
Canada
Phone: (519) 429-0726
Download Pastor Rev. Kendall Reimer-Johnson vCard
Quote of the Day
Proverbs 15:3
The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.
The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.
Denomination
Anglican Church
Anglican Churches in Port Burwell, Ontario, Canada
Anglican Churches in Ontario, Canada
Anglican Churches in Canada
All churches in Port Burwell, ON
Affiliations:
Anglican Church of Canada
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Leadership
Leader Name:
Rev. Kendall Reimer-Johnson
Leader Position:
Pastor
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Rev. Kendall Reimer-Johnson on Social Media:
Trinity Anglican Church Leadership Photos
Administration
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Mailing Address
Box 159
Port Burwell, Ontario
N0J 1T0
Port Burwell, Ontario
N0J 1T0
Driving Directions to Trinity Anglican Church
Travel/Directions Tips
We’re at 25 Pitt Street, Port Burwell. Just follow the signs – to Historic Trinity Church – as you enter the village.
Parking
Trinity Anglican Church Port Burwell Service Times
Sunday Worship: 11:30 a.m. (Eucharist Service: 1st & 3rd Sundays;
Morning Prayer Service: 2nd, 4th & 5th). Refreshments and fellowship follow every service.
Parish Council: Once a month following the service @ 1 p.m. (September-June)
Service Times last updated on the 12th of May, 2019
Morning Prayer Service: 2nd, 4th & 5th). Refreshments and fellowship follow every service.
Parish Council: Once a month following the service @ 1 p.m. (September-June)
Service Times last updated on the 12th of May, 2019
Worship Languages
Dress code:
Children and Youth Activities
Under 12s:
Cubs: Tuesdays, 6:30-8 p.m.
Beavers: Sundays, 4:30-6 p.m.
Beavers: Sundays, 4:30-6 p.m.
Under 18s:
Local outreach & community activities:
‘Our Little Pantry’: just outside the Parish Hall, available 24/7. Take what you need; contribute what you can. We are also able to respond quickly to requests for urgent food needs for local families; please contact the rector directly.
Ladies’ Guild Prayer Shawl Ministry: The women of Trinity provide handmade prayer shawls to the sick and the shut-in. We knit and crochet at home, and together at monthly meetings through the winter. We also knit hats for newborns for the FreshStart program. To join us, or to request a shawl for a friend and family member, email our wardens.
Fresh Start: We support this St. Thomas-based program – www.fsms.ca – with donations of funds, baby supplies and knitted hats for newborns. Fresh Start’s mission is to share Christ’s love with pregnant and parenting women in crisis and to improve the quality of life for them and their children. Its services include a Group Home, a semi-independent Support Housing Apartment, a Pregnancy Support Centre, and Transitional Community Support to assist residents when they are ready to move on to independent living.
Corner Cupboard: We support our local food bank, located in Aylmer and serving the communities of East Elgin, with funding and food supplies.
Prayer Chain: Prayer is a profound component of our faith and ministry at Trinity. Our prayer chain is a group of parishioners who pray daily for the needs of our world and for individuals. To request prayer, or to join our prayer circle, email our wardens.
Seasonal Community Events: We hold events for the whole family to mark the seasons of the year in our lakeside village.
Seniors Suppers – last Friday, September – May, 6 p.m. ($12/person).
Pancake Supper and Ashes Service – Tuesday evening before Ash Wednesday
Blessing of the Nets – one Sunday afternoon in March at the Harbour.
Easter Egg Hunt – Saturday morning of Easter weekend at the Parish Hall.
Easter Sunrise Service – 6 a.m. Easter Sunday.
Anniversary and Cemetery Decoration – Sunday of May 24th holiday weekend.
Potluck Summer Picnic – a Sunday in June at Sand Hills Park.
Hallowe’en and All Saints’ Treats @ Trinity -October 31st.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Services – December 24th and 25th.
Ladies’ Guild Prayer Shawl Ministry: The women of Trinity provide handmade prayer shawls to the sick and the shut-in. We knit and crochet at home, and together at monthly meetings through the winter. We also knit hats for newborns for the FreshStart program. To join us, or to request a shawl for a friend and family member, email our wardens.
Fresh Start: We support this St. Thomas-based program – www.fsms.ca – with donations of funds, baby supplies and knitted hats for newborns. Fresh Start’s mission is to share Christ’s love with pregnant and parenting women in crisis and to improve the quality of life for them and their children. Its services include a Group Home, a semi-independent Support Housing Apartment, a Pregnancy Support Centre, and Transitional Community Support to assist residents when they are ready to move on to independent living.
Corner Cupboard: We support our local food bank, located in Aylmer and serving the communities of East Elgin, with funding and food supplies.
Prayer Chain: Prayer is a profound component of our faith and ministry at Trinity. Our prayer chain is a group of parishioners who pray daily for the needs of our world and for individuals. To request prayer, or to join our prayer circle, email our wardens.
Seasonal Community Events: We hold events for the whole family to mark the seasons of the year in our lakeside village.
Seniors Suppers – last Friday, September – May, 6 p.m. ($12/person).
Pancake Supper and Ashes Service – Tuesday evening before Ash Wednesday
Blessing of the Nets – one Sunday afternoon in March at the Harbour.
Easter Egg Hunt – Saturday morning of Easter weekend at the Parish Hall.
Easter Sunrise Service – 6 a.m. Easter Sunday.
Anniversary and Cemetery Decoration – Sunday of May 24th holiday weekend.
Potluck Summer Picnic – a Sunday in June at Sand Hills Park.
Hallowe’en and All Saints’ Treats @ Trinity -October 31st.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Services – December 24th and 25th.
Other activities & ministries
Over-60 Sunshine Club: 1st & 3rd Mondays at 2 p.m.
Ladies’ Guild: 2nd Tuesday at 2 p.m.
Study Group: seasonally, Thursdays at 2 p.m.
Seniors’ Suppers: Last Friday at 5:30 p.m. (September-May)
Ladies’ Guild: 2nd Tuesday at 2 p.m.
Study Group: seasonally, Thursdays at 2 p.m.
Seniors’ Suppers: Last Friday at 5:30 p.m. (September-May)
Special Needs/Accessibility:
Prayers and hymns:
Main Bible:
Hymns and Songs:
Other information:
Average Adult Congregation:
Average Youth Congregation:
Additional Info:
Trinity Anglican Church Photo Gallery
Trinity Anglican Church History
Trinity Church, Port Burwell is the third, chronologically, of the ‘four sisters’ – the pioneer Anglican churches of the Talbot District. The others are Old St. Thomas (1824); St. Peter’s, Tyrconnell (1827); and Christ Church, Port Stanley (1845). Of them, Trinity is the one most clearly associated with a single person, a giant in the early settlement history of this part of Ontario. The village of Port Burwell was the creation of Colonel Mahlon Burwell; and so was Trinity Church.
In 1836, when Trinity was officially opened for worship, Mahlon Burwell was a retired land surveyor living in Port Talbot, the owner of large tracts of land in the London District, its land registrar, and its Member of Parliament. Colonel Burwell’s gift of a church to the village was a remarkable one, perhaps unique in Ontario’s history. In 1833, just three years after he had surveyed village lots on his land at the mouth of the Otter and a year after his brother founded its harbour company, he laid the cornerstone of a church which he endowed with lands and a rectory. He did attach one important string to his gift: that the front box-pew would be retained for his family, and that his descendants would inherit the right to nominate the rector in perpetuity. It would not be until 1908 that his grandson and namesake, Mahlon G. Burwell, would relinquish that right to the Bishop of Huron. That timing coincided with the ascension of a Burwell cousin’s husband to the Bishopric.
The 1830s had been a decade of discord and rebellion in Upper Canada. In a colony rife with political unrest and in a pioneer settlement only beginning to attract the tradesmen needed to complete a structure like Trinity, it would be three years before the church was, as the Colonel wrote to his friend Archdeacon John Strachan in Toronto, “ready to be preached in.” In the meantime, the Anglicans of the lakeshore settlement were served principally by three priests: Reverend Evans of Woodhouse, Reverend Burnham of St. Thomas, and the itinerant young deacon, Thomas Green, who preached the first official service in Port Burwell, in John Burwell’s tavern, in February 1836. After John Strachan’s inaugural service at Trinity on May 22nd of that year, these men continued to visit the village every few weeks until a permanent rector was finally appointed in 1843, after considerable lobbying by Colonel Burwell.
The Colonel’s son, Leonidas, took over the management of his Port Burwell affairs in 1842, married a local girl, and built a gracious home on the west bank of the Otter which still stands today. Reverend Thomas Boulton Read appointed him Trinity’s first rector’s warden at the inaugural vestry meeting in 1843, a post he held almost continuously until his death in 1879. Leonidas’ son, Mahlon G., then held the position until 1908. Both men were interred in the historic burial ground which surrounds the church, along with scores of their pioneer neighbours. Alton, Backhouse, Blackburn, Draper, Emery, McDiarmid, Pressey, Prong, Poustie, Saxton, Sutherland and Youell are just some of the early lakeshore families and Trinity parishioners commemorated there.
In his last years as warden, Mahlon G. acquiesced to the congregation’s decision to renovate the sanctuary in the Edwardian style. Its box-pews were replaced by straight pews along a centre aisle; the stoves and gallery were removed; a chancel was added to accommodate the memorial window donated by the family of Rector Clarence Widmer Ball; vertical wainscoting was installed; and the Georgian glazed windows were replaced with stained glass. Mahlon G. also lived to see the purchase of the former continuation school in 1925 and its move across Wellington Street onto the northwest corner of the churchyard to serve as a parish hall.
Trinity is representative of a form of church architecture unique in Ontario to the first half of the nineteenth century, known as ‘builder’s picturesque’. With its Gothic hall-and-tower plan, it reflects the English heritage of its founders. In its construction and decoration, though, it harkens more to their Loyalist roots in colonial America. It exudes a pioneer simplicity complemented by sophisticated classical detail and just a hint of the American democratic spirit. It was built entirely of the material closest at hand; the splendid old-growth pine of the Carolinian forest in which it sat. The Regency tracery of its windows was repeated in the Moorish arch, symbolizing the Trinity, over the entrance, a feature unique to Trinity among the churches of Upper Canada. Also unique was its light-handed nod to the Greek Revival in the continuation of the eave returns on its south facade into a complete pediment. A quatrefoil window on the tower drew the eye upward to its octagonal steeple. In 1853, a bell weighing 525 pounds was purchased from the Meneely Company of Troy, New York and shipped to Port Burwell via the Erie Canal. For many years it tolled the hours of 7 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. daily for the benefit of the many villagers who did not own pocket watches.
In 1836, when Trinity was officially opened for worship, Mahlon Burwell was a retired land surveyor living in Port Talbot, the owner of large tracts of land in the London District, its land registrar, and its Member of Parliament. Colonel Burwell’s gift of a church to the village was a remarkable one, perhaps unique in Ontario’s history. In 1833, just three years after he had surveyed village lots on his land at the mouth of the Otter and a year after his brother founded its harbour company, he laid the cornerstone of a church which he endowed with lands and a rectory. He did attach one important string to his gift: that the front box-pew would be retained for his family, and that his descendants would inherit the right to nominate the rector in perpetuity. It would not be until 1908 that his grandson and namesake, Mahlon G. Burwell, would relinquish that right to the Bishop of Huron. That timing coincided with the ascension of a Burwell cousin’s husband to the Bishopric.
The 1830s had been a decade of discord and rebellion in Upper Canada. In a colony rife with political unrest and in a pioneer settlement only beginning to attract the tradesmen needed to complete a structure like Trinity, it would be three years before the church was, as the Colonel wrote to his friend Archdeacon John Strachan in Toronto, “ready to be preached in.” In the meantime, the Anglicans of the lakeshore settlement were served principally by three priests: Reverend Evans of Woodhouse, Reverend Burnham of St. Thomas, and the itinerant young deacon, Thomas Green, who preached the first official service in Port Burwell, in John Burwell’s tavern, in February 1836. After John Strachan’s inaugural service at Trinity on May 22nd of that year, these men continued to visit the village every few weeks until a permanent rector was finally appointed in 1843, after considerable lobbying by Colonel Burwell.
The Colonel’s son, Leonidas, took over the management of his Port Burwell affairs in 1842, married a local girl, and built a gracious home on the west bank of the Otter which still stands today. Reverend Thomas Boulton Read appointed him Trinity’s first rector’s warden at the inaugural vestry meeting in 1843, a post he held almost continuously until his death in 1879. Leonidas’ son, Mahlon G., then held the position until 1908. Both men were interred in the historic burial ground which surrounds the church, along with scores of their pioneer neighbours. Alton, Backhouse, Blackburn, Draper, Emery, McDiarmid, Pressey, Prong, Poustie, Saxton, Sutherland and Youell are just some of the early lakeshore families and Trinity parishioners commemorated there.
In his last years as warden, Mahlon G. acquiesced to the congregation’s decision to renovate the sanctuary in the Edwardian style. Its box-pews were replaced by straight pews along a centre aisle; the stoves and gallery were removed; a chancel was added to accommodate the memorial window donated by the family of Rector Clarence Widmer Ball; vertical wainscoting was installed; and the Georgian glazed windows were replaced with stained glass. Mahlon G. also lived to see the purchase of the former continuation school in 1925 and its move across Wellington Street onto the northwest corner of the churchyard to serve as a parish hall.
Trinity is representative of a form of church architecture unique in Ontario to the first half of the nineteenth century, known as ‘builder’s picturesque’. With its Gothic hall-and-tower plan, it reflects the English heritage of its founders. In its construction and decoration, though, it harkens more to their Loyalist roots in colonial America. It exudes a pioneer simplicity complemented by sophisticated classical detail and just a hint of the American democratic spirit. It was built entirely of the material closest at hand; the splendid old-growth pine of the Carolinian forest in which it sat. The Regency tracery of its windows was repeated in the Moorish arch, symbolizing the Trinity, over the entrance, a feature unique to Trinity among the churches of Upper Canada. Also unique was its light-handed nod to the Greek Revival in the continuation of the eave returns on its south facade into a complete pediment. A quatrefoil window on the tower drew the eye upward to its octagonal steeple. In 1853, a bell weighing 525 pounds was purchased from the Meneely Company of Troy, New York and shipped to Port Burwell via the Erie Canal. For many years it tolled the hours of 7 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. daily for the benefit of the many villagers who did not own pocket watches.
Trinity Anglican Church Historical Photos
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