All Souls’ Chapel, Charlottetown
We entered the large St. Paul’s Anglican Church near the downtown through a wide-open door, a common practice of Charlottetown’s churches. St. Paul’s is a large church with a plain cavernous sanctuary. The exterior is made largely of the distinctive red local sandstone. The sanctuary is rather inornate except for attractive stained glass windows and plates and plaques commemorating famous unknown local people. Off to the side, a discretely hidden drum set signaled the parish’s foray into contemporary worship. A volunteer docent at the church drew circles and arrows on our Charlottetown map to show the way to St. Peter’s Cathedral, Anglican.
The downtown of Charlottetown is ringed with various mostly neo-gothic churches, made of the same local sandstone, the prominent red rock of the island. Grind it up over several eons and you get a deep red soil. The ground rock, by the way, is used to dye locally sold souvenir t-shirts.
St. Peter’s, on the west side of the downtown, is also of a simple design, nothing at all like the splendid neo-gothic Christ Church Cathedral at Fredericton with end on end art and a spire that could have inspired “Why the Chimes Rang.”
We were at the door of the cathedral sanctuary trying to reconcile the two different times listed for Evening Prayer when I saw him approach.
He was a huge man, 6’3”or so with hands the size of tennis racquets. Leaning heavily on a steel cane, he shuffled slowly up the walk in scuffed black oxfords, carrying a well-worn black leather brief case. Black walking shorts left his pale calfs exposed.
Gasping a greeting to us, he added simply, “I’m Allan.”
Looking us over, he asked, “Are you here for Evening Prayer?” I nodded and he waved the briefcase. “I’ll meet you in the chapel.”
We walked alongside the church toward the red stone All Souls’ Chapel, Looking more ancient than its 130 years, the chapel’s red wooden door was surrounded by large sandstone blocks that built up to a steeply slanted slate roof. We entered and were greeted by a man in the back pew.
“Where are you from?” I explained and he replied, “I don’t know about Washington. I’ve only been to Toronto.” As Allan entered from a side door, our greeter slipped out.
Now wearing a wrinkled black robe, Allan leaned his cane against the wall, and heavily lowered himself into the ornate wooden chair.
We read Evening Prayer from the Canadian Book of Common Prayer, a compact book with print small enough to be a problem.
Our prayer leader, the doddering man with a drifting left eye and a body that struggled to move, read prayer in an accented, beautiful and sonorous voice, waiting for us and cuing us into responses we could barely see.
Rising and politely waiting as he struggled to raise his massive body, we sat when he did, or when he said, “You may sit.”
We prayed in words older than the red sandstone blocks, that God would protect us all and especially the Queen and her troops, that he would “holpen” us.
We sat, stood, and knelt in silence as Allan fumbled through thin pages finding the prescribed and appropriate prayer for the day and the spirit.
When we first saw him outside the Cathedral, I thought this man could die right here in front of us and create a lot of property damage when he fell. But his voice and his familiarity and certainty with the service transcended all those impressions and he became...it was like sitting with one of the ancients who had more to teach us than we could absorb.
The silences, awkward at first, became sacred time and a holy part of greeting and honoring the waning day, and a way of showing reverence to the Creator of Day and Night, Red Stones and faithful Old Men.
He paused a long time and dropped his head, an untrained shock of white hair falling forward over his face. And then he read the benediction. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen. Evening Prayer was ended.
He followed us to the door and asked about us and our travels. “I know Oregon,” he said, and, “Newfoundland is such a stark beauty, I haven’t been there in over fifty years.”
We closed the door to All Souls’ Chapel and heard him turn the latch. And for a while we could hear him shuffling up the aisle.
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