The UCE history below was published as a chapter in  Northern Lights: The Unitarian Universalist Congregations of the Western Canada District, edited with an Introduction by Joan Montagnes, published by Moosemilk Press, 1995. Rev. Marsh was UCE minister from 1986 to 1995, and is now at First Unitarian in Ottawa.

Not that it found Jesus or anything like that: it wasn’t even looking for him. The guest speakers at the dinner preceding the meeting were Rabbi Louis Sachs of the Beth Shalom Temple and the humanist minister Philip Petursson of the Unitarian Church of Winnipeg. The people gathered that night sought a permanent community of  faith where they could believe as their own consciences dictated: a place where they could follow the lines of reason and logic wherever they might lead; a way to be with like-minded others; a community where they could celebrate each other’s weddings, anniversaries and births, could comfort each other in times of hardship, and could mourn with each other at times of death.

Early History
Institutional incarnations of liberal religion began in Edmonton around 1907 and continued, in a sometimes broken line, right up to that May night in 1954. In 1911 a gathering of liberal Edmontonians invited Rev. Charles Francis Potter to come to Edmonton to help build a church. By 1915 those first Unitarians had secured a building and their membership included the mayor, an alderman, a judge, a professor, and the editors of both daily newspapers.

Speaking at the installation of Rev. William Irvine at the Calgary church in 1915, Potter declared that within the Unitarian tradition, a pastor spends one-tenth of his time on the needs of his congregation and nine-tenths on work in the community at large. Certainly, this described both Potter’s and Irvine’s bent. Both had personalities that put them in good standing with the community at large.

However, the First World War changed that. Potter and Irvine opposed Canada’s involvement in the war. Both saw large numbers of men from their congregations leave for active duty, and this meant they preached against the war to mothers and wives whose sons and husbands were fighting on the front lines. This made them unpopular with W.H. Alexander, a vocal pro-war lay member of the Edmonton congregation. Alexander was a classics professor at the University of Alberta. Not content with getting his own Edmonton congregation to toe the patriotic line, he complained to Unitarian headquarters in Boston that:
"...The Unitarian Church of Calgary is becoming a Cave of Adullam for every discontented social element in the community ... Unitarianism (in Calgary) is regarded as pro-German, pro-Bolshevist, pro-Anarchist, and everything else that deliberately sets out to make trouble for the fun of making it."

The Cave of Adullam refers to a place mentioned in the Bible where David retreated from the anger of King Saul: “And every one who was in distress, and every one who was in debt, and every one who was discontented, gathered to him” (I Samuel 22:2,2). At Alexander’s insistence, Boston withdrew funds earmarked to augment the salaries of both Irvine and Potter.

Potter went on to distinguish himself as a leader of the Ethical Culture Society in New York City. Irvine served three terms as a Member of Parliament, each time under the banner of a different political party – the Labour Party, the United Farmers of Alberta, and the Canadian Commonwealth Federation. Alexander, meanwhile, took over the affairs of the Unitarian congregation in Edmonton. Though he vehemently supported the war, he was also, as described by Frank Keeping, “a left-wing liberal in religion and politics...and a very capable speaker.”

The war diminished the Edmonton church through internal conflicts and departing men. After the war, the church became a fellowship. In 1934, Rev. Carl Storm came to serve the group, but that lasted only two years. Alexander resumed the helm in 1936.

In 1938, the fellowship decided to disband. It sold its property to Garneau United church and returned the proceeds to Boston. When Alexander departed for Berkeley, everyone gave the church up for dead.

Resurrection
In 1950 a layperson, Dick Morton, brought the congregation back to life. He led a Unitarian fellowship that met in the old Garneau Community Hall, the same site as the original church. The support of the American Unitarian Association enabled the fellowship to enlist a minister. Soon after, the group moved to another temporary location.

Recalling his first encounter with our movement at that time, church member Al Lust wrote:
"One Saturday, while I was reading the church page in the local newspaper, a Unitarian Fellowship advertisement caught my interest. It read: A Fellowship with no Dogmas or Creeds. The next morning, with address in hand, and after much searching, I climbed a long staircase to a second-floor room of a downtown building.

At the door I was greeted by an elderly gentleman who escorted me to a wooden chair. On looking around, I noticed a large painting of a tiger on one wall and a large painting of a lion on the other wall. What on earth have I walked into, I thought. Later I found out that the hall was rented from the Oddfellows Society and the paintings could not be removed.

Seated at the front, facing the audience, was a handsome young man dressed in a university graduation gown. For the first time in my church-going life, this young minister, Rev. Charles Eddis, had me sitting on the edge of my chair. His sermon was enlightening and made so much sense. He spoke about the similarities among the eastern and western religions. At subsequent services he spoke about the historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer, Einstein, and the humanitarian contributions of other great men and women. His sermons were so stimulating that you would think about them for days after.

Of the churches I had attended in the past, I had forgotten the sermon before I reached the door immediately after the service. At the Unitarian Fellowship services, I found the discussions during the coffee period after the service exhilarating."

Al and his wife Millie, and many others, worked to turn the fellowship into a church. Of the 67 founding families, 21 had belonged to the fellowship started by Dick Morton.

Others arrived new to the faith. Don Goodwin remembers the group asking him to join so that it could top 100 members; at that time the American Unitarian Association required a group to have 100 individual members to gain recognition as a church. Don was unenthusiastic at first and figured that he could dodge the request by stating what he really believed about God, Jesus and religions in general. He discovered that Unitarians believe in the free expression and tolerance of opinions, and ended up on the first board of trustees.

That May evening 40 years ago also drew people active in the earliest incarnations of Unitarianism in Edmonton. Some of them remembered Alexander with great fondness: Frank and Silver Keeping, Anna and Gordon Streeter, Giles Clark, Jack and Berneice Hollinshead and their family members, Mary McAuley, Frances Evans and George Evans. Some of them, such as Frances Evans and the Hollinshead’s daughter, remember attending church school in the earlier church.

Frank Keeping served as board president from 1966 to 1967. His wife Silver edited the church newsletter for many years and included some of her own bits of wisdom, which became known as “Silverisms”. The UCE Keeping Room took its name from  Frank and Silver. Anna Streeter served as secretary to the first church for many years. Giles Clark, who was treasurer for 20 years during Alexander’s tenure, designed and built the large pulpit and matching chairs in the sanctuary from lumber that the British and Foreign Unitarian Association gave to the church as a gift.

William Irvine also attended that inaugural meeting in 1954. He was living in Edmonton, by then retired from politics. Irvine probably remembered Alexander less fondly than some, but he remained committed to Unitarianism. He was memorialized at our church when he died in 1962.

The newly-formed congregation elected as its first trustees, among others, Dick Morton, Don Goodwin, Crosby Johnston, Berneice Hollinshead and Ken Ferguson.

In 1958 the church elected the first woman president of its Board of Trustees, Molly Butterworth. She was known for her infectious laugh, her sharp wit and her hats. She served for many years as trustee and chair of the Edmonton Public School board. The Mary E. Butterworth School in Edmonton is named after her. Her husband Clifford prepared and printed the church newsletter at his home until 1965.

In the summer of 1958 Rev. Bill Horton was called to be minister. Many in the congregation liked and supported him, but some felt his sermons lacked the polish of Charles Eddis. Molly Butterworth commented: “We Unitarians may say that we do not want our ministers to be like Jesus, but we sure do like to crucify them.”

During Horton’s tenure the church building on 110th Avenue was built. Ruth Patrick and Michael Liknaitzky chaired the committees that oversaw its construction. Dana Greeley, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, attended the dedication of the new building in 1962. W.H. Alexander, who had joined the United Church of Canada on his return to Canada, came to give a final sermon as a guest speaker in the new building.

In 1965 Bob Wrigley was called to be minister. He writes:
"I arrived with my family in Edmonton from Toronto by train in late winter, a brand new minister (I’d not had a church “of my own” before) for a brand new church building, the paint still wet. The building included a general office and a minister’s study, but no staff. We soon found such needed and affordable.

The first church secretary was a nice Roman Catholic lady from Belfast; Mrs. Gillan’s charming lilt answering our phone was a real plus. I well remember moving our mimeograph machine from Molly and Clifford Butterworth’s basement to a newly-staffed office as the beginning of a new era.

The expectation then was that the minister’s main responsibility was to produce a sermon of half an hour’s duration almost every Sunday. It had to be scholarly and touch one of the issues of the day. My task was to do this 12 times before summer, and I did. The result was gratifying. The church soon found itself renting stacking chairs which filled the social room, and sometimes there was standing room only against the glass behind them.
The board decided to go to double services in the fall.

What they didn’t know was that I had entirely exhausted my list of sermon ideas. I went off on summer holidays absolutely convinced that in the fall I was going to have to get up in the pulpit twice and admit that I didn’t have anything more to say. Come the fall, though, I had some more ideas.

Double services were a success. The great moral issue of the day was the war in Vietnam, and I preached against it, once four times in a month. Two lawyers quit the church, but many others took their places.

I started my ministry here at a time when Freud’s view was widely accepted, even by otherwise democratically-minded Unitarians, that the husband in a marriage should be the decisive partner. When I invited Mary Von Stalk to preach here on feminism, a new idea, what she said was mind-boggling."

Social Justice
Church members have taken on a number of social action projects such as founding W.I.N. House, a shelter for battered women; and the Native Friendship Centre. Jack Allen  remembers that a group of church people paid the rent for The Soft Machine, a drop-in shelter used mostly by young transients in the 1970s.

Church members Elenor Smith and Flora Watson helped found the Edmonton Planned Parenthood Association. Giving out birth control information was still against the law in Canada at that time and Flora kept the files of the fledgling organization in her root cellar. Her daughter Janet, then in grade school, remembers the mothers of some of her playmates forbidding them to visit the Watson’s home, fearing Janet’s mother would try to indoctrinate their daughters with birth control information.

The church has also sponsored a number of refugee families. The first family came from Hungary in the 1960s. During the late 1970s, the church sponsored three refugee families from southeast Asia. Florence Campbell tells the story of the five Tran brothers:
"First one brother was established in Edmonton with the help of Ada Nanning. The remaining four arrived late one very cold January night. We had not been informed of their arrival in time to arrange proper accommodations, so we took them to a motel.

One of them who appeared to be the youngest was ill and should have gone to hospital, but he wanted to stay with his brothers. So  reluctantly we left them in the charge of the motel owner for the night.

With the help of many different church members, we found them a suite, scrounged some furniture, brought them some food, and obtained health care cards. Then we enrolled them in English classes at St. Kathryn’s School. Within 3 months the boys were working and were on their own.

The last we heard of them, they had brought the other members of their family to Canada and were established in a house in the Mill Woods area."

In the late 1980s, the church raised money to sponsor a family from El Salvador. The Progressive Conservative federal government, however, would not allow the family to immigrate, and in the meantime the civil war in El Salvador ended. The church then decided to lend the money to Mebrat Seyoum, a child care worker who ran our church nursery for a number of years. The money enabled her 12-year-old son to emigrate from Eritrea. Her son lived with his grandmother, whose health was failing, and he also faced conscription into one of the warring armies of Eritrea or Ethiopia.

Gay Rights
Rev. Rob Brownlie performed the first same-sex ceremony of union at our church in 1973. By the end of 1984 he had performed more than 30.

In April 1978 Anita Bryant came to Edmonton to promote her anti-gay views. The Unitarian church of Edmonton joined with a city-wide coalition to protest Bryant’s message of hatred. Rob Brownlie maintained a high profile during that campaign – one of the few public leaders who did – and shortly afterward CBC invited him to appear on Leo LeClerc’s television show. Even against tremendous anti-gay bias on the panel, Brownlie’s rational human rights perspective dominated the debate. CBC aired the show 6 more times during the next few years.

The personal story of church member Stan Calder illustrates the importance of the church’s work in human rights:
"Shortly after I joined the church formally, my friend and I became estranged, and some months after, a letter was sent to all members of the staff at the high school where I was teaching adults, to the school board, and to the Alberta Teacher’s Association. The letter alleged that I was using my position as a teacher to make sexual contacts with my male students.

I was devastated. That night I left my apartment and spent the night driving around town, my mind alternating between taking my own life and fighting back. About 5 in the morning I came to Rob’s apartment – I felt it was the only place I could go, yet I didn’t really know whether he would turn me out or not.

Rob saved my life that night. I was asked to return to my classroom the next day, and nothing further happened."

When the Unitarian Universalist Association published “The Welcoming Congregation”, a curriculum about ways to make churches more welcoming to groups that suffer chronic discrimination, Stan Calder led workshops on it here and in other congregations in Western Canada. To date (1994), the Unitarian Church of Edmonton is the only church in Canada to have met the criteria established by the UUA to be designated as a Welcoming Congregation.

In 1994 the congregation hosted the annual Interweave Convocation, the Unitarian Universalist conference to discuss issues concerning gay, lesbian and bisexual people. The opening ceremony was held at City Hall and the keynote speaker was Svend Robinson, a Member of Parliament from British Columbia.

Difference Sources of Inspiration
From its beginning, the Unitarian Church of Edmonton has relied on more than its ministers for inspiration and ideas. Our membership has included many gifted speakers who have filled the pulpit in the absence of a minister or in periods between ministers. Our guest speakers have included politicians, educators, poets, social activists and other movers and shakers.

Our church and its congregation also celebrate the arts and music. Throughout the 1970s, Dottie Kempinsky coordinated the Uni-Arts festival. This one-day exhibition and sale of works by local artists was among the first of its kind in our city. Our building is adorned by paintings, and banners created and designed by members of our congregation and other Edmonton artists.

The church has been host to some of the most talented guest musicians in our city. We have also been blessed with steady contributions of music from within our own community. Church members have formed choirs for special events and our congregation was proud to be one of the field testers for our denomination. (Editor’s Note: The Chorealis choir was created in 1995.)

Chaplaincy
Our church has always had at least one minister on its staff since 1970, but has found the chaplaincy program a way to lighten the load of the minister, meet the needs of the public, increase our visibility in the community, and deepen the spirituality of those laypersons selected to serve as chaplains among us. The list includes Elaine Koyich (now Elaine Roberts), Ruth Patrick, Jim Logan, Marge Roche, Stella Clarke, Margery McGregor and Stan Calder.

Church School
Our church has always been blessed with at least a classroom’s worth of educators within the congregation, including two executive secretaries of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, Bernie Keeler and Julius Buski. We have always had a strong commitment to young people, though it has sometimes been debated how much church programs should blend the needs of adults and children.

Laura Morton organized the church school program during the 1950s. She was more traditional in her views than many in our church, and one Sunday many in the congregation were surprised when the children sang for them “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam”. Other activities started during Laura’s tenure continue as traditions today, including decorating a mitten tree at our family Christmas service and also lighting a candle for each child born into the congregation and adding wax from those candles to one large candle.

Margot Tyndall came to our church in 1969 and was accredited within our denomination as a Minister of Education while she was running our church school. We ordained her in 1972. Under Margot’s direction the Unitarian Church of Edmonton pioneered sex education curriculum in a program called About Your Sexuality for its junior high-age students.

Inge Drewin (now Hess) took over for a year after Margot’s departure, and held our first May Madness celebration, a celebration of spring complete with hot dogs, making ice cream, fortune telling, poetry reading, croquet, hat making, bubble blowing and a tea party.

Judy Urquart (now Dunlop) served from 1978 to 1990. She began a custom of making gingerbread houses for children to decorate at our Christmas Family Potluck.

Chya Herron became Director of Religious Education in 1990. She was hired from outside of Edmonton.

Up to 1994
Following the retirement of Rob Brownlie in 1984, Michael O’Kelly served for one year as an intern minister, then I (John Marsh) was called. The pulpit search committee, chaired by Bernie Keeler, pondered, after my first interview, whether I was mature enough for the job. I was interviewed on my 30th birthday. Learning of the committee’s concern I wrote a letter:
"I am only a little discouraged by your concern about my lack of pulpit experience. I am reminded that when Samuel Eliot was fresh out of divinity school he applied for the ministry of the Arlington St. Church in Boston, and was told by the chair of the search committee that what their pulpit needed was “not veal, but beef”. Eliot took a church in Denver, Colorado, came back to Boston to serve as President of the American Unitarian Association, and after retiring from that job he then assumed the ministry of the Arlington St. Church – some 35 years after his initial interview.

I am still enthusiastic about the possibility of serving the Edmonton Church. I sensed a warmth, an enthusiasm and a sparkle about your congregation which one does not find often enough in many of our New England churches. I simply hope I do not have to wait another 35 years to be considered eligible."

I started work as minister of the Unitarian Church of Edmonton on April 1 of the next year. In 1987 I married Alison Patrick, daughter of founding members Ruth and Freeman. Ruth had sat on the search committee that had brought me to Edmonton.

The morning after the wedding, Rev. Mary Scriver of the Unitarian congregation in Saskatoon preached a sermon called The Morning After, in which she invited the congregation to “Consider that this far domain, so north in Canada, so close to the past of wild frontiers, has offered its princess to a son of Boston, a classical Unitarian from the right neighbourhood ...Is this a romantic story or what? Prairie humanist Unitarian woman marrying a mystical Massachusetts Unitarian!”

Conclusion
In her introduction to this book, Joan Montagnes alludes to our churches and fellowships as northern lights that have “emerged and receded, sometimes to emerge again in another form.”

A generous bequest in 1975 from Percy S. Bailey, a school teacher and principal, enabled our congregation to pay off its mortgage and have a healthy sum left over. It is from the overall economic health engendered by that bequest that we have been able to undertake such things as publishing the set of histories you are now reading.