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ST. PAUL’S, the oldest Protestant Church building in Canada, nestles amid the grey walls and chimney pots of Halifax, a little bit of old England, for its original design was an exact copy of Marylebone Chapel in London.

Lord Cornwallis and his two thousand new settlers were not long in the Halifax which they founded in 1749 before the townsite was planned and reservation made for a church. The Imperial Government sent the design, and Boston, in the New England Colonies, supplied the frame and materials for construction. Opening ceremonies were conducted on September 2, 1750, and the church entered on its work for the spiritual needs of the settlers. Additions were made in 1812 and later, and today it seats two thousand people.

Even the busts and tablets which crowd the walls and the face of the gallery give but small hint of the place of this church in the history of Nova Scotia and Canada. Governor Charles Lawrence, after the fretful career which included the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, was buried here, and the Legislature ordered a monument to mark his public services. Wolfe and Amherst, who were to command the final attacks which took Canada from the French, worshipped in St. Paul’s while passing through Halifax. Thomas Masterton Hardy, colleague of Lord Nelson, to whom the hero of Trafalgar said in his dying moments, “Kiss me, Hardy,” was married in St. Paul’s in 1807 while on the North Atlantic Station.

Sir John Wentworth, Administrator of Nova Scotia for sixteen years until his death in 1820, is honoured by a memorial; and if the visitor is fortunate enough to have as guide Archdeacon Armitage, the present rector, he will realize the proud place in Canadian history of many others whose names appear on the walls. Two of the rectors, Breynton and Willis, each had charge of St. Paul’s for forty years.

On a June Sunday morning in 1813 the service in St. Paul’s suffered a dramatic interruption. A messenger entered, whispered to a friend in the garrison pew, and left at once. The news, whatever it was, flew from pew to pew, and soon the whole church was empty. Housetops and wharves were crowded, for two ships were coming up the harbour. It was the triumphal return of the “Shannon,” towing as a prize the United States ship “Chesapeake,” which had been captured after a bloody battle off the New England coast.

As a garrison city and naval station, Halifax has a long roll of distinguished visitors and residents, and St. Paul’s has shared the honour. In imagination we may picture the tramp of the hosts of soldiers and sailors and the stately march of gold-laced commanders, typifying the devotion of England’s ruling sons, as they entered St. Paul’s, one generation after another, in the spirit which has made religious duty an essential part of the life of the King’s subjects wherever they may be.

St. Paul’s Church, Halifax