St. Paul’s builds window to the past
Stephanie Burr
Staff writer
March 31, 2008
Stephanie Burr
Lookout
The four stained glass window panels that decorate the back wall of St. Paul’s Church will be replaced with depictions of Royal Canadian Navy history in commemoration of the 2010 Navy Centennial..
To celebrate the 2010 centennial of the formation of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), St. Paul’s Naval and Garrison Church on Esquimalt Road plans to depict the history of the RCN in a stained glass window.
The window will encompass the many different sections of the navy and honour the thousands of men and women who served in the RCN.
The commemorative window, consisting of four panels, will replace the original stained glass windows along the church’s back wall.
“This window is unique in that it will become a living memorial of the RCN,” says retired Rear Admiral Bill Hughes. “It will remain long after all the other centennial celebrations have died away.”
The idea for the memorial window was born last May when Admiral (ret’d) Hughes was attending the dedication ceremony of a stained-glass window celebrating the Princess of Wales Own Regiment and 21st battalion in Kingston, ON.
“While I watched the ceremony, the vision of a commemorative window in honour of the centennial floated into my head,” says RAdm (ret’d) Hughes. “I knew right away St. Paul’s would be the perfect place for this new piece of history.”
Padre Andrew Gates, the priest at St. Paul’s Naval and Garrison Church, hopes the commemorative window will draw more people to the church to experience the historical building.
“We’re hoping the window will create even stronger ties between the navy, it’s people and our church,” he says.
To pay for the window, RAdm (ret’d) Hughes formed the Navy Memorial Window Project committee. The committee launched its official fundraising challenge March 19 at the CFB Esquimalt Wardroom.
They’ve contracted Mercer and Schaeffer Glass Studio of Victoria to design, build and install the window for $68,000.
“We’re thrilled at the chance to tackle such an historically significant project,” says Tom Mercer, co-owner with Ed Schaeffer of the glass studio. “It will be a challenge to merge the RCN’s past and present.”
Mercer says the designing of the window will take the most time.
“Because there are so many different branches of the navy, and so many events have taken place over the 100 years, the window will have to encompass an extremely large scope of data,” says Mercer. “We plan on using a good deal of traditional heraldry and symbols to represent the different factions within the RCN.”
The glass studio will import mouth-blown flashed antique glass from Germany for the window, and use lead alloy to hold all the pieces together.
“This window will be built almost exactly like the ones that sit in the church right now,” says Mercer. “It will be there for the 200th anniversary and hopefully for many more after that.”
Mercer and Schaeffer’s work can be seen in the Victoria Legislative buildings where they built the stained-glass window for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee.
The window will be ready for installation in 2010. Padre Gates says it will be a long wait until he can lay eyes on it.
“We hope to capture how positively the RCN has affected the lives of Canadians throughout the past 100 years,” he says. “We want to encapsulate the essence of the RCN and how it has evolved.”
To make a donation, go to www.navymemorialwindow.org or call RAdm (ret’d) Bill Hughes at 592-5846
