There’s something about St. Matthews Cathedral.
Tucked away on Fifth Avenue, it has high, arched ceilings and stained glass windows.
Its story starts in 1913 as a small mission church, and since then it has seen several additions.
Over the past year, its congregation has been working on creative ways to open up new opportunities for the building.
“Like many churches...we are facing challenges in terms of our revenues are decreasing and we need to look at ways of using the building other than just for Sunday morning services. For us, we’d like to continue using the building as a place of worship, but in order to do that we need to start generating income in other ways,” explained Nicola Alexander.
In 2017, a group of Toronto-based consultants, who Alexander said are from an architectural firm dealing with heritage and conservation, visited the Anglican church to help re-envision what it could offer the community.
“That generated a lot of discussion and one of the things to come out of that was how there’s a shortage of art and performance venues here in Timmins. Although we do have the theatres at the different schools and the different venues, a lot of them are priced out-of-reach of small non-profit groups, and gallery space is also limited. There was this idea, maybe we could offer some of the space at the church for those kind of things,” she said.
With their eyes set on opening up the church to groups needing performance or exhibition space, a new challenge unsurfaced: offering musicians a concert-quality piano.
“Going into 2018, the question was how do we go about finding a grand piano in Timmins,” she said.
It turns out, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto sometimes receives donations of pianos. Alexander said when the organization isn’t going to hang on to it, they look for people who could benefit from the donation.
“We were very lucky in that way, between prayer and the consultants stepping in having those contacts, it was only a matter of time before Father Greg was contacted by the Royal Conservatory to say that there was this piano available and would the church be interested in accepting the donation,” she said.
The logistics of getting the instrument from Toronto to the Timmins cathedral was a bit of a hurdle.
“It was a miraculous arrival of the piano,” she quipped. “One day we were talking about how we needed a piano, we were talking about what that would entail in terms of capital cost and it did require a certain investment from the church in order to get it here, to have it installed, tuned and balanced, and so the piano has been here since the summer of 2018. And already it has generated interest, and what is exciting is it’s being used not only on Sunday mornings.”
St. Matthews is known for having good acoustics.
The 5th Avenue Strings perform there, it’s hosted the Timmins Symphony Orchestra Chamber Concert, and pianist Ruby Jin held a master class in the fall. Choirs and the local adult band rehearse in the space, as well.
It’s more than just a space for music, though.
Alexander said there is the potential for hosting small art or photography exhibits.
In 2016, she noted the Porcupine Art Club and quilting guild had an exhibition to draw attention to the stained glass windows, which were installed by Canadian artists Yvonne Williams and Rosemary Kilbourn.
“We did an event back then where we celebrated the windows, we had the quilting guild exhibiting using the pews and the Porcupine Art Club had the paintings set up at the back of the church here,” she explained. “The space is versatile and really, we’re looking to community partners — anyone’s welcome to approach us to find out if it’s a fit. Explain to us what they’re planning to do, and if it can work then we are more than happy to accommodate them.”
Aside from the space upstairs, there are rooms available downstairs that Alexander said can be used for teaching or meeting space, as well as a larger area at the back that can be used for exhibitions.
While offering space to the community could generate new revenue, it's about more than that for Alexander.
“Buildings need to be used, you can’t have an empty building in a city like this where there’s so much need. By using the building, we’re also conserving it for future generations,” she said.
The rental of the space would be done on a donation basis.
Interested groups can contact Alexander at [email protected].
