A massive fire in Canada’s smallest city claimed a historical building when St. Jude’s Anglican Church in Greenwood, B.C., was burned to the ground in the early morning hours last Friday, May 10.
The church fire in Greenwood, a city in south-central B.C. with a population of around 700, destroyed three buildings and a garage, the city said in a Facebook post on May 10. Firefighters from the
Greenwood Volunteer Fire Department,
Midway BC Fire/Rescue, and
Grand Forks Fire Rescue were called in to attend the fire at the 123-year-old church.
“No further statements will be provided until the fire has been fully investigated,” the City of Greenwood said in its social media post.
“We ask the public to please not speculate and allow emergency services to do their jobs and collect the facts surrounding this fire.”
While there was relief that no life was lost, Bishop Lynne McNaughton of the Anglican Diocese of Kootenay said the destruction of the century-old church meant a loss of a piece of the city’s history.
“The loss of Saint Jude’s is a blow to the Anglican community and a sad day for the people of Greenwood,” said the bishop in a May 10
news release.
“Not only was it a testament to our shared history, but as one of the oldest buildings in Greenwood, it has been a place for worship and community since 1901.”
“We lost a part of us last night - a connection to the earliest days of the city, and the region,”
posted Christopher Stevenson, an
administrator of the Facebook group
Boundary Heritage, on May 10.
“Generations of parishioners.....baptisms, weddings, funerals.....events. A place that held it all, within its simple wooden walls. Very sad,” Mr. Stevenson wrote, noting that the church dates back to 1901 and was the second-oldest remaining church in Greenwood.
Arsons
While no specific details on the cause of the fire have been released, the incident in Greenwood is the latest in a series of church burnings in recent years.A recent fire that occurred in April at a northeast
Calgary church is believed to have been started by arson, according to a May 2
news release from the City of Calgary, which stated that the city’s police arson unit and hate crime prevention team are investigating.
A wave of
church arsons across Canada began in 2021 after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation claimed ground-penetrating radar had uncovered the possible burial sites of 215 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, a city in B.C.’s interior about
320 kilometres northwest of Greenwood. The sites have not yet been excavated to confirm the presence of bodies.
More than 83 churches across Canada have been vandalized, burned down, or desecrated since then. In December 2023 alone, there were four church fires in Alberta suspected of having been caused by arson.
The RCMP said last December that arson was believed to have been the motive behind two fires set within an hour of each other that destroyed two churches in a
community northwest of Edmonton on Dec. 7, 2023.
A week later, the RCMP announced it was searching for suspects following a fire at a church in Janvier, a
community in northern Alberta, on the night of Dec. 15, 2023. Bishop Gary Franken of the Diocese of St. Paul told The Epoch Times that the destroyed building was the community’s older church adjacent to a new building, St. Gabriel Catholic Church, which was not damaged by the fire.
Then on Dec. 20, 2023, the RCMP received a report of a fire at a church near the village of Beiseker, about 50 kilometres
northeast of Calgary. A local fire investigator later that day determined that the incident was due to arson.
Matthew Horwood contributed to this report.
