Go back

At Prayer – Robert Reford and Rivalries Between Believers and Their Churches

Black and white photograph of men and women gathered in front of a wooden church at the end of mass. The men are, for the most part, dressed in a dark jacket, a white pentalon and a flat braided hat decorated with a ribbon. The women wear a long white dress and a flat braided hat. In the background, a farm building can be seen behind a clump of mature spruce trees.

Post Card

St. George’s Church, Metis Beach

Les Amis des Jardins de Métis Collection

Metis was serious about religious worship. It was frowned upon not to attend religious service at least once every Sunday.

Summer resident Robert Reford pressured his children to attend church regularly and to ensure that they made church attendance a part of the lives of their children. He was no hypocrite, attending church regularly, sometimes twice on Sunday. He so valued good preaching that he endowed a scholarship at the Montreal Theological College to reward the best student preachers.

But Reford drew the line when it came to the “smells and bells” of the High Church movement that he felt had invaded Anglican churches in Montreal. When in 1904 he received a request to contribute to the erection of an Anglican Church in Metis, he flatly refused:

Amongst my reasons being that although attending the Church of England here, I have greatly enjoyed the simplicity of the Presbyterian and sometimes the Methodist services in Little Metis for which place I think them well suited and do not think a High Church service such as the Bishop of Quebec would want would be.

Even after St. George’s Anglican Church was built to provide Anglicans with a place to worship in Metis, he encouraged his devout wife to attend one of the other services.

The Anglican Church was erected and opened in 1905. It flourishes today, one of the most frequented churches in the sprawling Diocese of Quebec and a hub for the community and venue for its special occasions.