This Happened in London, Ontario
Memories and thoughts on the twenty fifth anniversary of the Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Parish
By Dr. Dimitry Pospielovsky
My family and I were residing in Munich, Germany. I was working as a research analyst on Soviet affairs for Radio Liberty, broadcasting to the Soviet Union, when I received a teaching position at the University of Western Ontario. This was in 1972.(1)
Shortly before our departure for Canada a letter arrived from Professor William Bush. As then a recent convert to Orthodoxy he had the vision of Orthodoxy as a world religion, not just an ethnic religious factor as seen, by most immigrants “from the Old country”. He was concerned that there was no place in the London area where a convert to the Orthodox faith could call an existing Orthodox parish his/her spiritual home. All parishes were strictly ethnic. Dr. Bush strongly believed that should there be English-language parishes, they would attract converts, those who — like he himself — would discover the fullness of the Christian faith in Orthodoxy.
In the course of the last 25 years we have witnessed the appearance of new Orthodox churches in South-Western Ontario. But all of them were ethnically oriented and operated in the languages of the predominant ethnic group of the given church. In other words, they were inward looking “foreign religious groups”, irrelevant to the vast majority of Canadians. We both felt a crying need for a pan-Orthodox mission here in London.(2)
Soon we discovered that at least two other persons, although far away in New York City, were concerned about our situation. These were the late Dean of the St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Father Alexander Schmemann and Professor Father John Meyendorff of blessed memory.
Shortly before Easter 1973 1 had to go on business to New York City. As it happened I was on my way, back to Canada on Palm Sanday. My route passed within a kilometer from the very heart of the Orthodox mission on the American continent ~ the St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood, N.Y., a seminary that from its very foundation in 1937 made the dissemination of the Orthodox faith in the Americas its goal and purpose. I decided to turn off the highway to attend the Palm Sunday liturgy at the seminary chapel. Naturally on such a great feast the chapel was full to the brim with students, seminary professors and other worshippers. Soon I was to experience nothing short of a miracle. But first I must make a brief detour.
In Montreal where I had lived with my mother and sisters between 1950 – 1957, our church, the Sts. Peter’s and Paul’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral, used to invite St. Vladimir’s Seminary professors to give popular theology lectures at the church hall during the six Great Lent weeks. Among them the most brilliant and charismatic lecturer was the late Father Alexander Schmemann. Even we teenagers used to come to his lectures. At tea after the lecture Father Schmemann would often sit with us chatting on all sorts of subjects — from theology to theatre, art, music, literature. He was a man for all seasons and ages.
While attending university and thinking about my future I was torn between going into politics, which for us — the war generation — meant participating in the struggle against Communism, in whatever form, or enrolling at St. Vladimir’s Seminary.
It was in 1957, less than a year after the anticommunist rebellion in Hungary, cruelly crushed by Soviet tanks, when I completed my undergraduate studies. The Hungarian tragedy weighed heavily in favour of politics. But before making the final decision I took a trip to New York, appeared, totally unannounced, at Fr. Schmemann’s flat and told him about my plans, concealing from him that inside I was torn between the two options. Father Alexander asked me whether I came for advice or to announce my decision. Not quite honestly I said, my decision was final, after which Father Alexander gave me his blessing, said he would pray for me and let me go.
Well, that Palm Sunday of 1973 for the first time in 15 years I had the joy of being at the liturgy served by Father Alexander. The last time Fr. Alexander had seen me I was 22 years old and cleanly shaven. Fifteen years later I was bearded and greying. And yet, as I went forward to venerate the cross at the end of the service, Father Alexander spread his arms wide and embracing me called me by my diminutive name, Mitia, used only in the family and with best friends.
How can such memory be explained rationally? In my understanding such remembrance of a youngster with whom he had merely a couple of brief conversations 15 years earlier, was nothing short of the miraculous. Keep in mind that Fr. Alexander was the seminary dean, dealing daily with 80 students or so, spending half of his time lecturing at parish retreats and in universities, meeting thousands of people each year, writing books and researching for them. And yet remembering even the physical features of a person whom he hardly knew! Moreover he invited me ,for a meal, during which he raised the question of an English language parish in London, Ont. Half jokingly he said: “Well, we shall solve the parish problem in London by ordaining you, Mite”. I replied it was too late now; he should have raised the issue fifteen years earlier. To my further amazement, Father Alexander recapitulated that conversation of 1957 verbatim; and said: “But you had told me then that your decision was final. Had you told me you came for advice, that would have been a different matter. But my principle is not to impose my will on the freedom of others, unless asked, as long as the decision is not vile or criminal.”
Ten years later he died of cancer, burnt out at only 62 years of age.(3)
It was at his funeral that I got an indirect explanation of such truly miraculous memory.
The funeral oration on behalf of the seminary was given by Veselin Kesich, professor of New Testament at St. Vladimir’s seminary, an outstanding scholar and a truly saintly person, dearly loved by the student body and by his colleagues. I shall recite the oration to the extent to which my memory has retained it. Professor Kesich said:
“I often asked myself, how come that for thirty years, living together in this small academic community, we were not torn by intrigues, serious quarrels, scandals. The answer to this puzzle is Father Alexander. He taught us to value people for what they are, always find the best in each person, and never compare them with each other. Treat each one of them as a treasure unto oneself, unique and unrepeatable value before God. There was no room for envy and jealousy in this approach. In short, all these long thirty years Father Alexander was teaching us how to live. The last two years he taught us how to die.”
These words sounded to me to be the answer to the puzzle of Fr. Schmemann’s phenomenal memory: he perceived something unique and unrepeatable in each human being he dealt with, and that uniqueness, visible only to his supersensitive personality, remained imprinted in him as if it were a photograph of the soul.
Then there was a brief, but very meaningful and promising oration by his eminence Metropolitan Philip of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of America. The Metropolitan praised the late Father Alexander as a great missionary who had put Orthodox Christianity on the map of America. Metropolitan Philip pointed out that during all his ministry in America Father Schmemann struggled to unite all Orthodox “jurisdictions” into a single consolidated Orthodox Christian Church of America and Canada, however ethnically multifaceted within. In conclusion the Metropolitan pledged to continue Father Alexander’s work to achieve complete church unity.
Twenty years have passed since that memorable funeral. The Church is still far from being consolidated. We can only hope and pray that the latest motions within the Antiochian Archdiocese will lay the real foundations for the one unified Orthodox Church in the Americas.
But let us now throw a look at our multiethnic Holy Transfiguration parish in London, Ont. — trace its beginnings and development in its first quarter century of existence.
The first attempt at “pan-Orthodoxy” in London, Ont. was in the form of Orthodox Christian Fellowship, coming into existence in 1972. The soul behind it was George Athanasiadis, then Professor Bush’s graduate student in French literature, now a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church. Professor Bush was then on his sabbatical leave in Europe. But on his return got fully involved with the OCF. He and I became its “academic advisers”. The University of Western Ontario OCF began very modestly. Its foundation was announced in a university newspaper we received from the university community centre the use of a room for lunch time meetings once a week, frequented by a small group of students, mostly Greeks, but there were also two or three Slavic students. We discussed various issues of theology, prayed together and dreamt of eventually having our own English language parish. At this stage we were helped spiritually by the local Greek priest, Father Apostolos Ananiadis, who used to come to our weekly meetings (irregularly) and lead us in prayer. Our group, however, remained very small: the idea of pan-Orthodoxy or English language Orthodoxy was hard to digest: Greeks knew of Greek Orthodoxy, for Ukranians there could be only Ukrainian Orthodox, etc.
In the meanwhile Father Apostolos was posted to Toronto. The interim priest at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, appointed in 1975, was Hieromonk Ilarion, a Winnipeg-born half-Greek, half Ukrainian, a former Athonite monk with a missionary zeal. In contrast to his predecessor who still thought and operated in terms of a national Greek Church, Father Ilarion had a pan-Orthodox vision. He began to serve Saturday morning services in English for our group and, provided us with addresses of mixed-marriage members of his parish. Following up by sending letters to these families produced no response at the time — the idea of an English language parish was “too revolutionary” for the ethnicaly minded Orthodox minorities in the area. Nevertheless, we continued with morning English language services at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. By then our group included several area Orthodox people of diverse nationalities, such as the Canadian-Rumanian Fluter family (who would later be instrumental in establishing a Rumanian Orthodox parish in London), the Arab Lebus family, the Greek-Canadian
Despina Jennings and her son Chris who directed whatever semblance of a choir we could muster, the Russo-German Vera Sander and her family, Nicholas Voskakis, then a student at the University of Western Ontario. A great help to us was Peter Avgeropoulos, then a history student at the university. A talented musician and a dedicated Orthodox Christian, he led us in lay services. In the 1980s he graduated from the St. Vladimir’s Seminary and now serves in the
Greek Cathedral in Toronto.
Alas, Fr. Ilarion did not last long in London. In less than a year he was removed to Toronto where he headed the youth department of the Greek Diocese for a short time. But then was posted to the Greek parish in Hawaii. There, after his refusal to give Communion to some influential local Greek masons, he was removed and returned to Greece. Eventually left priesthood got married and returned to Canada.
But the seed planted by Fr. Ilarion did not die. We held irregular prayer meetings at various places. Roughly by 1976 we chose the present name of our parish: Holy Transfiguration. There were two reasons for choosing the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord. One was to restore a line of continuity from the first Orthodox parish in London, which had existed here before World War I as a missionary parish of the Russian Orthodox Church with its headquarters in St. Petersburg, the then capital of the Russian Empire. The second reason was in the very name: the purpose of our terrestrial existence being to transfigure our sinful lives into true Christians.
At this early stage of our formation we were helped by Fr. Joseph Hardy, our Roman Catholic friend who succeeded in persuading two Roman Catholic institutions — the St. Joseph / St. May Hospitals and the Brescia Convent to permit us to celebrate liturgy (or lay services, when we had no priest) in the above institutions. By the way, when Fr. Hardy introduced us to the Mother superior as Orthodox, she replied she never heard the word orthodox used as a noun. She heard Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Catholics, but Christian Orthodox she was hearing the term for the first time. To think of it that such a degree of ignorance regarding the Orthodox Church was here in London mere two decades ago! Anyway, we continued to exist…
It was on 21 January 1978 that we celebrated our first and only liturgy conducted by, whom we thought at the time to be our future pastor, Fr. Alexi Vinogradov a young priest and professional architect, a student about to graduate from St. Vladimir Seminary, sent to us by our friends and supporters, Frs. Schmemann and Meyendorff.
lt would be appropriate for the reader to ask, how did we expect to support the priest with some miserly donations of less than 15 persons if that, because not all of the above group followed up with support and participation after that first liturgy of the Holy Transfiguration church. Moreover, Fr. Vinogradov had a wife and two children to support while studying at the seminary.
Well, our future pastor — as we thought he would be — supported himself and his family while at the seminary by the proceeds of a rural estate he had built in Vermont for Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a famous Russian writer and a former prisoner of Soviet concentration camps, expelled by the Soviet Government in 1974 for his three volume expose of the the Soviet Communist terror. His publications won for him world acclaim and several million dollars from the sale of his books. Father Vinogradov built that estate at considerable discount in comparison with the going prices; and he hoped to borrow some money from Solzhenitsyn to last him the first 6—7 months of life and settlement here in London, until he would set up his architectural business here, serving our community as a part-time priest for the early period of the parish’s formation.
Alas, Solzhenitsyn never even responded to Fr. Vinogradov’s request.(4) Thus, the first project fell through. The other attempt by our friends at St. Vladimir’s seminary was to try to dip into a special missionary fund of $6,000 provided by the Orthodox Church of America (5) for the Diocese of Canada, headed at the time by the late Archbishop Sylvester. With the support of St. Vladimir’s Seminary Fr. Vinogradov petitioned the Archbishop to lend him $ 4800 to carry him through the year during which he hoped to establish himself in London as an architect and gradually repay the debt. But the Archbishop turned the plea down. Why? Well, the late Archbishop Sylvester was a very kind and pious man, but he grew up and spent most of his life in the poverty of the post-revolutionary Russian émigré community in France and apparently feared depriving his diocese of what amounted to be a large part of the Diocese’s meager budget.
All that the Archbishop offered us in the spring of 1978 was a certain Fr. Panteleimon, a poorly educated monk from St. Tikhon’s Monastery who did not fit into our situation at all. In fact Panteleimon later parted with his monastic vows and, as far as we know, has worked as a hairdresser in Vancouver.
Then for a few months Fr. Gregory (Papazian), a monastic priest from Quebec, used to come once a month. But he was a hermit by his inclinations and soon discontinued his visits to us.
The reader might conclude from the above story that in our early stages our canonical connection was with The Orthodox Church in America. Indeed, this was so. However, getting nowhere with the Canadian diocese of the Orthodox Church in America, Dr. Bush turned to the Antiochian Archdiocese. Metropolitan Philip reacted promptly. The temporary arrangement in 1978 — 79 was for Fr. Theodore Koufos, a Toronto priest of the Antiochian Archdiocese and an outstanding iconographer, to become our visiting pastor, serving us in the late afternoons once a month, donating back to us every penny we paid for his travel expenses. Despite the fact that we joined the Antiochian Archdiocese, Fr. John Meyendorff continued to care for us as much as he could. Every time he was participating in retreats in Toronto or Detroit, he would divert to London to address our group, pray with us in a liturgy and deliver an open lecture on the university grounds on subjects related to Church history which was his particular specialty. Fr. Tomas Hopko, professor of the Church Doctrine at St. Vladimir’s (now retired) also visited us around 1974 and together with Fr. Ananiadis developed a lively discussion on the role, potential and importance of the steadfastness of the Orthodox theology in the contemporary intellectually and spiritually unstable world.
Not all of our visiting priests were as dedicated as Father Ted, as we called him. We even had an impostor, an alleged archimandrite Alexi, recommended to us by the rector of the Antiochian Orthodox church in Toronto, having served only one liturgy in London that pseudo-archimandrite returned to Toronto and committed suicide, as, according to the Toronto press, the Scotland Yard was after him.
Our first resident priest was Fr. Seraphim (Storheim), the present OCA diocesan bishop of Canada. He arrived in London straight from Fr. Schmemann’s funeral in October 1983, served our parish for a year, then was recalled by the OCA Metropolitan Theodosius and appointed to Winnipeg. Two years later he was consecrated bishop.
From 1985 to ’89 we had then a recent St. Vladimir’s seminary graduate, Fr. Steven Kostoff. Our income at the time was still insufficient to provide for a full time priest with two children. The understanding was that Fr. Kostoff would take a secular job. Having failed to find a job, Father Kostov’s perseverance of four years was a heroic act of total dedication.
From 1990 to ‘91 we had a young priest from Lebanon, Father Maxim, a deeply religious and dedicated pastor, whose limited English and lack of experience of a multi-national parish or of the Canadian environment resulted in all sorts of tensions in the parish. In 1991 he moved to Prince Edward Island and later to Halifax.
Our next long-term resident priest — from 1991 to ’97 — was Fr. David Smith, a highly energetic and dedicated recent convert to Orthodoxy from a fundamentalist sect. He stayed with us for over six years. Thanks to his fantastic energy, dedication and faith it was during his tenure that our present chapel was purchased. At first he was forced to supplement the meager salary we were able to pay with a secular job, but half way into his service in London the parish council voted to raise his salary so that he could be a full time priest. The salary was still very modest. His presbytera had to supplement the family budget by taking a job, which was not easy, as they had three children to bring up. Still, Father David promised he would not leave us until our parish had stabilized. One of the main achievements of Father David was his ability to attract youth.
After he had left us for his native USA we had to make do with a visiting priest almost for two years. This was Fr. Mark from Toronto who came only for the Sunday services.
Finally in 1999 our present parish rector, Fr. Gregory Heers arrived in London. A former Anglican priest from California where he brought his whole parish over to Orthodoxy. However, his Californian parish joined at first the Western Rite of the Antiochian Orthodox Church. When he arrived in London he had had hardly any experience with serving the eastern rite Orthodox liturgy, let alone in a multi-ethnic parish with so many cultures to cope with. Yet he coped and came to be loved by parishioners. His dedication to Orthodoxy and deep faith in God helps all of us to pray and to become more and more involved. In addition to Greeks and Orthodox Arabs who form the nominal majority of our parishioners, we have ever growing contingents of converts and Ethiopians, with a sprinkling of other nationalities. It would be wrong to conclude our notes without mentioning our two most dedicated recent converts to Orthodoxy: Subdeacon Polycarp Gilbert, who, we hope, will soon be ordained; the other invaluable addition is Natalia Sinclair, Dr. Bush’s assistant in arranging and directing church singing and readings.
With God’s help we are slowly growing numerically and spiritually. The present chapel is already insufficient for our numbers and we are now aiming at acquiring or building a church, which could accommodate all our needs in terms of worship and education.
With God’s help we hope to become equal to our aim of a true Orthodox mission!
Footnotes
(1) For my wife and children this was their first resettlement in Canada. I, my mother and sisters had originally emigrated to Canada as post-war refugees in 1949.
(2) As an immigrant myself, I fully appreciate that desire to transplant one’s home culture to the new country and create for oneself a ghetto-like “little: Russia” or, say, “little Rumania™, etc. In fact I remember how shocked I was, when I heard Canadian-born members of the Montreal Sts. Peter and Paul’s church speaking English among themselves. I took it for granted that members of a Russian church should speak Russian; not to mention an Orthodox liturgy served in English!
(3) He was soon followed by Fr. John Meyendorff who had inherited the deanship from Fr. Alexander, but died also of cancer at the age of 66 in 1992.
(4) To forewarn our readers from particularly harsh criticism of Solzhenitsyn, it ought to be said that ever since his expulsion from the Soviet Union and subsequent return to the post-communist Russia, he has been very generous with supporting such projects as financial aid to former Soviet prisoners, subsidizing publication of all sorts of historical documents relating to Russia. In short, he considers that he should concentrate on helping his native country, and not to spread out to sufficiently well-¢o-do Western states.
(5) The Orthodox Church in America is the legacy of the Russian Orthodox Church’s mission in North America, originating from the late 18* century Russian Orthodox Mission to the aboriginal nations of Alaska. Owing to the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917, regular relations of the Russian Orthodox Missionary Diocese with the Mother-Church became impossible. It was only in 1970 that as the result of lengthy negotiations between the Russian Diocese on this continent with the Mother-Church in Russia, the latter granted the Russian-American Diocese full autocephaly, i.e. canonical independence.