Margaret Smith

I was not born into this church. I started attending services at St John’s United when I was about 18 years old. It was in the 1940’s. My family lived on Duncan Street and St John’s was close by. During the war years, my mother, brother and I always went to ‘The Friendly Hour’ at St John’s on Sunday nights after the 7pm service. It was mostly for the young servicemen. We would have a sing-song, and afterwards the ladies provided tea and homemade goodies. I think the servicemen came for the goodies more than anything else! Some of our girls from St John’s met their future husbands at these sing-songs, and ended up marrying them and moving to other parts of Canada.

I always enjoyed the services at St John’s. When I first started coming, J. D. McLeod was the minister, but he soon left to become a chaplain with the Armed Forces. We had Reverend Doug Macintosh for awhile, and then A.A. McLeod came. At that time we had an organist named Sadie. Reverend A.A. took a fancy to her, and they ended up getting married.

I have so many fond memories of life in this church that I wouldn’t know where to start! My husband Murray and I were married at St John’s by Reverend R.W. Braine in December of 1951. Our children Brian and Heather were baptized here and became members.

Over the past sixty years I have served on the Stewardship Development, Worship and Music and Christian Development Committees, the Pastoral Care Team, UCW, Sunday School, Official Board, and I was the Clerk of Session twice. When I realized that I’d been through the whole gamut, I knew it was time to stop!

Of all the church groups I’ve been involved in, my favourite was Sunday School. I taught for many years and was Superintendent for a while as well. We used to have so many children enrolled that we had classes for each grade and usually had separate girls and boys classes. While the main church service took place, we held our own children’s service in the hall, complete with hymns- we had our own ‘Mrs Music’, Mildred Covert, to play the piano. Then the children went to their classes, and we got back together at the end for another prayer and a hymn. Often the main service would be over before ours, and the parents would wait at the back of the hall until we were finished.

St John’s certainly has changed since then. There used to be a lot more families living in the church neighbourhood. In the 1970’s, people started heading out to the suburbs. They would often still come to St John’s to attend services, but fewer and fewer children would be registered for our activity programs. When I first came, there were CGIT, Messenger and Explorer groups meeting at St John’s. These have all disappeared over the years.

In the past, the UCW (The United Church Women) has contributed enormously to the finances at St John’s. We formed our UCW in 1963, and at one point we had 125 members serving in 8 units: Esther, Gilchrist, Lydia, Miriam, Mary Todd, Ruth, Service and Sunshine. We were big fundraisers--we had our Spring and Fall Teas which included crafts, rummage and bale sales. Today there are about 24 members remaining. We don’t have the numbers to raise money and contribute to the church like we did in the old days.

I remember at one time when the St John’s Clerk of Session was appointed, it was for an indefinite period! Don Morrison was Clerk of Session for 25 years with Ron Caldwell serving as his assistant from the 1950’s right into the 70’s!

There were many changes when Reverend Neil MacDonald became our minister. The morning service time was set back a half hour to 10:30am instead of 11am. This was started in the summer so people could leave church earlier in the day to enjoy the summer weather. Neil wanted to keep the new service time, and people were so unhappy with this change! Some thought they would never be able to make it to church at 10:30 in the morning! After a while, they just got used to it. Before Neil came, there were no lay readers during the service, or families carrying the bible to the altar, or children’s sermons, or Coffee Hours after church. These were all new initiatives during Neil’s time.


I don’t want to see St John’s change, but my head tells me it must change because there isn’t enough financial support. I give full credit to the group that are working to bring this change about, but I not looking forward to it.

What’s special about St John’s? Well, our music program is wonderful. It is surprising when you hear how many people come to St John’s because of the great music. Credit goes to our Music Director Ray Grant, and to the members of our choirs. I’ve been to other churches where all the hymns were dreadfully long and sounded so tragic!

What else is special about St John’s? The people! They are welcoming and friendly. A smile goes a long way, and there are a lot of smiles at St John’s United Church. I used to go to UCW conference meetings around the Maritimes, and I’ve been to some churches that were not welcoming at all. No one would make an effort to come up and say hello unless they knew you. Go into St John’s about 10 minutes before the service starts and just listen to the chatter and the friendly conversation! In some churches, you wouldn’t hear any more than a whisper!