Jarvis: No building is more important than this one

By Anne Jarvis
Windsor Star
November 06, 2014

http://blogs.windsorstar.com/opinion/no-building-is-more-important-than-this-one

Assumption Church is seen in this file photo.

The Paul Martin Building in the heart of Windsor’s downtown, the old post office in historic Sandwich, the old jail in Sandwich — they’re all stately, heritage buildings.

But if there is one building around which this city must unite, if there is one building that we must save, it is Our Lady of Assumption Church. There is none more important, not only for its grandeur, which is magnificent, but for its role in the very formation of this community. We must do whatever it takes.

Undoubtedly, you can question the role of the Diocese of London in the seemingly doomed attempts to raise money to restore the 169-year-old icon.

Parishioners reportedly gasped when the diocese — which says it’s committed to preserving the landmark that towers over University Avenue and Huron Church Road, which talks about the historical, cultural and architectural significance of Assumption, the oldest Catholic parish in Canada west of Montreal – announced that it wouldn’t contribute a cent to the $10-million project.

“Are you kidding me?” some people have asked fundraisers. “If the diocese isn’t giving any, why should I give?”

Indeed, why, when parishioners dutifully forward 15 per cent of their Sunday, Christmas and Easter collections to the diocese. When we pay $125 per ticket for the annual Bishop’s Dinner, with all the proceeds going to St. Peter’s Seminary in London. When city taxpayers are contributing a record $250,000. When even a church in Detroit – a bankrupt city in another country – is raising money for the project.

The diocese is “cash poor,” spokesperson Mark Adkinson said. But it’s paying $1.8 million to renovate its offices around the diocese.

You can ask, as parish council chair Kevin Alexander did in a letter to Bishop Ronald Fabbro last week, why there was no effective oversight in the first fundraising campaign, which Fabbro chaired, and which ended in chaos. The diocese fired the company hired to raise the money. The all-star campaign board quit. The campaign was left half a million dollars in debt. And less than half the money raised was spent on the restoration. You can imagine how difficult that made the second campaign.

You can ask why the diocese fired the three prominent community members who led the second campaign. They were volunteers. And why the diocese wrote in its letter to them that “the official fundraising campaign by Assumption parish for Assumption church has come to an end.” And, above all, why the diocese closed the church on Monday, even as it weighs a $10-million donation, even as Fabbro professes hope that it will still be restored and even as Assumption continued to draw 200 people to mass.

You can wonder, as Kim Spirou, one of the volunteer fundraisers does, if the diocese really has the will to save Assumption.

This is a tarnished brand, for sure, $10 million in debt because of settlements, legal costs and counselling for victims of its priests’ sexual abuse. Its parishioners have been shunted from Holy Name of Mary Church to Assumption and back to Holy Name of Mary.

But forget all this. Only one thing matters: saving Assumption. Because if Windsor doesn’t save Assumption, there is no other building worth saving, not the Paul Martin Building, not any building.

This transcends religion. You don’t have to be Catholic. You don’t even have to be Christian. And it’s about more than saving a building. This is about preserving one of the foundations of this community. What we need, as parishioner Agnes Szczesniak has said, is a call to action.

The history of Assumption can be traced all the way back to the founding of Detroit in 1701, when Cadillac invited aboriginal people to live near the fort. They responded, asking for a mission – what became The Mission of Our Lady of the Assumption.

The parish began in 1728 as a mission for the Hurons. The land for the current church was donated by the Hurons; Huron Church Road was named for it. It also came to minister to the French-Canadians who settled the area. It became the centre of life in Sandwich, the first permanent European settlement west of Montreal. It witnessed the fur trade, the Loyalists, the War of 1812, in short, the history of Canada.

Assumption is the parish’s fourth church, finished in 1845. It’s absolutely majestic, Gothic Revival with buttresses, turrets, a graceful spire, beautiful stained glass windows and bronze doors. The vaulted ceiling is adorned with carved angels, the floor with crosses and fleur-de-lis. The pulpit dates to 1793, a painting of the stations of the cross from 1883. The stone altar was imported from France; the communion rail is Italian marble.

It is breathtakingly lovely, and it is the history of Windsor.

There is no other building more important.