73 years from start to boom to finish. A Runnymede church's short history

I always look for anomalies when researching local history. Why doesn’t a building or a lack of a building fit into the neighbourhood? In the case of the row houses on St John’s between Willard and Priscilla, you would wonder why these were built so differently and clearly at a later date than the other homes nearby, mostly in the 1930s. I remember that this was a sparsely attended church in the 1990s. A scattering of cars on a Sunday morning and a head poking out the side door from time to time to check the weather. The St John’s Street Baptist Church had started off full of promise in 1905. It intrigued me as some of my long-deceased relatives had been Baptists, and the St John’s facility at one point had 600 children registered in Sunday School. The first Baptist effort in Runnymede happened in 1904. A group of men attending Dovercourt Baptist undertook to raise funds in order to start a West End church. Edgar Watson, Lionel Watson, George Yeo, William Durant, Percy Roberts, W. Chalk and G Hurst were encouraged by the Sunday School Superintendent at Dovercourt with these words:” As soon as you fellows save $100 (the equivalent of $2,638.04 in 2025), you can go out and start a Mission.” On January 1, 1905, the first service was held in a small, rented red cottage on Mrytle (now Morland Road). Within a month, they had over 70 students. Later in the spring, they began to hold religious services.

Later that year, the rent was raised on the cottage. Mr. S.J. Moore donated a vacant lot at Mrytle and Rose (now Windermere). Services were held in a tent by a student Pastor, Mr. W.P. Freeman. Meanwhile, a group from the church were building a new facility. By October 1905, the new building included an auditorium for 250 people and three classrooms. By September 1906, the church had grown to 23 members, and the student pastor was now an ordained minister.

That still wasn’t big enough. So for the sum of $2,400, the stretch of land on St John’s between Priscilla and Windermere was acquired. The building was physically moved to the new location, and a basement, back rooms and two wings were added. This all came with a $7,000 mortgage. The Church’s work was done through a number of committees, including the Home Department, the Cradle Roll, the Ladies Auxiliary, the Gleaners’ Mission Band and the Women’s Mission Circle.

The Baptist denomination believes that the bible instructs that only those who can confess their faith should be baptised; therefore Baptist churches do not hold a register of infant baptisms. Instead, they have a Cradle Roll where the birth of children within families of the church fellowship is recorded. In 1922, the Church was refurbished and a new lighting system was installed.

In 1923, a parsonage was built for the Minister and his family.

The missionary work seemed to work as the building was used to maximum capacity, and it was once again expanded with the work completed in 1927. At that point, it could hold 700-800 for services and 1,000 Sunday school students. At one point, there was even a special youth group doing missionary work in the Lambton/Humber River area. As with other churches of the time, St John’s Baptist understood that physical activity was important. It had a bowling league, and it had tennis courts. Maybe they held competitions against St Paul’s Anglican (which also had a tennis court, though my father, who attended St Paul’s, doesn’t remember playing a Baptist team) on Willard or the Baby Point Club. The Church was awarded for the largest Young People's group and the largest group at Sunday School rallies. On October 29, 1978, the Church held its final service on its 74th anniversary. For the previous 10 years, the congregation shrank in size, and most of the congregants were older and unable to financially or physically support a large building. In the 74 years, they had 17 ministers. Many of the ministers and non-ordained church leaders went on to serve other communities. In the end, they had to rely on Jack Dobbin, a layman from the Grace Church of the Nazarene on Annette Street, to fill the role of the minister during many services in the final years. After the sale of the building, the remaining funds were divided among four different Baptist organizations. The building was used as a place of worship by a small unafiliated church until it was sold and torn down for housing in the 1990s.