For parishioners of Saint Francis of Assisi parish, their 90th anniversary has given them time to reflect on their history, celebrate their many contributions to their community, and tell the story anew in hopes that the church will stand for another 90 years. Part of that history is the recollection of the parish’s early years by it’s founding pastor Father Boniface Heidmeier as a testament to the community’s resilience and the love they have for Christ and their church.
Before St. Francis of Assisi parish, there was the Franciscan monastery, which was founded, in part, as a stopover for Franciscans travelling from Montreal to the missions in Japan and China. “Montreal to Japan is a long way to travel,” writes Fr. Boniface Heidmeier O.F.M., “and thus a resting place before embarking on the ships for the East was very desirable.”
Vancouver was seen as the “logical location” for such a rest place and on February 24, 1924, with the permission of Archbishop Timothy Casey, the so-called Miller Estate was purchased.
Fr. Boniface has a wonderful way with words, and his description of the monastic acquisition is still entertaining nearly 100 years later. “The Miller estate was – let me say – a palatial looking edifice, good enough for any twentieth Lord of Knobblesticks!” he wrote. “It seemed to me to be so grandiose that I almost made the sign of the cross over my eyes, lest it might be an illusion of the evil one … But there it stood plainly written on a wooden signboard: ‘Franciscan Monastery, 1020 Semlin Drive.’ No illusion possible.”
During the intervening decade, some notable happenings separated the founding of the Monastery from the founding of the parish. The inside of the mansion was extensively reorganized and refurbished, a garden was planted and a guard dog was purchased to dissuade petty pilfering of the friars’ vegetables. Over the years, it became clear that something more substantial was needed to serve the local Catholic population.
In 1930, a self-appointed committee visited Archbishop Casey to petition him for a parish in the Grandview district, with the Franciscan monastery as the centre. They had over 200 signatures. It took some time for Vancouver’s bureaucratic mechanisms to move, but in 1936 Fr. Boniface reported that the “honour and the burden of founding the parish” fell into his lap.
The Franciscan chapel became the parish place of worship, and Fr. Boniface writes, “parishioners had crowded into the small Monastery chapel for the three Masses on Sunday; but this could not keep on for any length of time. A Church had to be built.”
Numerous suggestions were made for the Church location, but ultimately it was decided that it should be built next to the Monastery, and the adjoining property was purchased for $4,250 on May 14th, 1936.
Church construction concluded in 1938, and the new building was blessed by the Franciscan provincial, Father George Albert, OFM, on July 3 of that same year. The blessing was “not by any means an easy task,” writes Fr. Boniface, due to the need for “walking round the building over stones and lumber not yet cleared away.” Still, the blessing was accomplished with “as much dignity as possible,” and was followed by a solemn high Mass. The church was full to capacity.
With the Church blessed, it was hardly finished. The interior was bare except for the altar, which had been transferred from the house chapel, a small statue of the Sacred Heart and St. Anthony on rickety pedestals where the future side-altars were to be, and forty edge-fir pews. It took two years for the church to be furnished with everything it needed, including “pews, altars, statues, communion rails, and so forth.” The pipe organ was installed in 1942, and the fumed oak pulpit was added in 1953.
“It would take too much time to mention all the benefactors who contributed to the church,” writes Fr. Boniface, but “suffice it to say that their generosity was so great to enable to pay every bill from start to finish.”
More could be said about the church’s history, from Fr. Boniface’s going door to door to meet his parishioners, or his first rainy walk around the boundary of the new parish, or the story of the parish school, without which Fr. Boniface says the parish would have been a “lifeless organism,” which was a saga all its own, complete with wartime shortages, a quest to secure nails, and the hostile and confusing world of city zoning.
The day after St. Francis of Assisi parish was officially erected in 1936, Fr. Boniface set out on a rainy walk around its boundaries. Coming from downtown, he got off the streetcar at Hastings Street and Templeton Drive, then walked south to First Avenue, west to Commercial Drive, and back to Hastings and Templeton. “It was a rainy day,” he wrote, “and I started to inspect our St. Francis Parish.” The entire tour took just over an hour.
In the age of social media and the internet it’s hard to imagine this next part, but Fr. Boniface went in search of parishioners by traveling door to door. He eventually found 91 Catholic families within the parish boundaries, some of which had not seen a priest in 16 years. Fr. Boniface persisted, and later wrote, “With all humility I can say [this] has been my strong point in developing the Parish.”
The rest of Father Boniface’s recollections at St. Francis of Assisi’s parish website: https://sfaparish.ca/about/history
