Around Town: Jubilee United settles in, Holy Trinity approved, City Illuminated

Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley speaking with participants at the grand opening of Jubilee United Church.

Several Burnaby politicians and community leaders took part in the grand opening celebration of Jubilee United Church September 11.

The ceremony followed the congregation’s first worship service in their new home at 6000 Sussex Avenue, just north of Metrotown.

The church worked with Townline, a developer which has built a 42-story condo tower where the old church building was.

Right beside it, Jubilee United Church now shares quarters with the Pacific Mountain Regional Council (PMRC) of the United Church of Canada.

Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley introduced three city councillors (Mike Hillman, James Wang, Joe Keithley) who had also come out for the event. He welcomed the changes, saying:

What a fantastic facility you now have here. We’re just glad to be here to celebrate with you all. . . . What an exciting day for our community and the Jubilee United Church congregation. . . . [which] has had roots in the Burnaby community for well over a hundred years. . . . Jubilee United Church will continue to be a pillar of this community, long after any of us are gone. And that’s really what it’s all about.

Jubilee United Church celebrated its first worship service at the new site September 11.

(Hurley had been acclaimed as mayor of Burnaby for the next four years the day before this event because no one is running against him in the upcoming municipal elections.)

Raj Chouhan, MLA for Burnaby-Edmonds, offered congratulations on behalf of the Legislative Assembly (for which he is speaker) and Premier John Horgan. He said:

It’s wonderful to see people still going to church. Sometimes we feel that, are people really forgetting where we come from, who we are, what we do, what the communities are about? Church is the one which brings us together.

I have a long history with the United Church. In 1985 the United Church sponsored my trip to the Philippines, to go on a fact-finding mission, when Marcos was the dictator in the Philippines. . . .

I want to say thank you to the United Church for giving me that opportunity to go see what happens in the world – why we stand together to make sure there’s a democracy in the world, why we do what we do here in Canada. . . .

Graham Brownmiller, the minister of Jubilee pointed out the Jubilee is now one church with two sites; they still own and use their former church building at Rumble and Gray – which had been South Hill United until it joined with West Burnaby United in 2016 under the name Jubilee United.

PMRC Executive Minister Treena Duncan and Jubilee United Minister Graham Brownmiller during the morning service. Photo: Gwen Morse

Brownmiller explained the long and slightly complex history of Jubilee United:

The church at the corner of Rumble and Gray had not always been there; in fact they started at Gilley and Marine until “it became evident that the little church needed to move uphill and west, closer to the inter-urban tram line”.

So they moved to Clinton and Curragh in 1928, had Sunday School at Joffre and Rumble, built one building at Rumble and Gray and then moved it across the lane and built a new church on its site.

The same is to be said for the founding congregation of Jubilee who found themselves here at the corner of Sussex and Grange.

It originally started as a Sunday School at Kingsway and Dow and then two congregations were founded at Marlborough and Kingsway and Sussex and Kingsway – that was before church Union, so they were a Presbyterian and a Methodist. In 1936 they amalgamated and in 1948 the former building that was on this site was built. At that time the previous church was converted to a church hall which was replaced in 1956.

Several United churches in Metro Vancouver have undergone major developments, or are about to, including Oakridge, First and Lakewood Multicultural (all Vancouver); Como Lake (Coquitlam); and Brighouse (Richmond).

Holy Trinity plans approved

Holy Trinity Cathedral will be dwarfed by the new residential tower.

Just next door to Burnaby, another major development received the go-ahead during the summer. Holy Trinity Cathedral in New Westminster will be able to move ahead with a project which has been dreamed of and planned for years.

A report on the Anglican diocesan site by the Venerable Richard Leggett, Vicar of Holy Trinity, tells the story:

New Westminster City Council unanimously approved the Heritage Revitalization Agreement and associated by-laws on third reading on Thursday, June 30, 2022. City Council Chambers were full of community members, HTC members and members from both Conwest (HTC’s development partner), and Terra Housing, (HTC’s housing consultant).

The initial development goal is as follows:

Conwest Developments Ltd. and Holy Trinity Cathedral are proposing to redevelop, seismically upgrade, and restore the Holy Trinity Cathedral currently located on 514 Carnarvon Street and develop a 30-storey residential tower with a mix of market condo and secured market rental units. The project will provide a significant benefit to the neighbourhood and the City of New Westminster and delivers on several community objectives.

During the public hearing disappointment was voiced at the inability to include the non-market rental housing that was a component of the original plan. BC Housing announced in June 2021 that it was able to fund only 20% of the projects for which applications were filed and HTC’s application was not successful.

However, the revised project enhances community space making, including a significant commitment to the visible recognition of Aboriginal place in art and language, as well as a revised community use policy that prioritizes Aboriginal use of Cathedral facilities. These conversations can now proceed more vigorously after 3rd reading.

More information about the redevelopment project is available at HTC’s redevelopment project website.

City Illuminated

Korean artist Min Young Kim will be featured at the Dal Schindell Gallery until September 28. City Illuminated is “an exhibit of luminous cityscapes.”

Here is the artist statement:

Min Young Kim’s painting practice explores the urban landscape as a place where complex relations emerge. Kim focuses on the spatiality of the densely populated areas of the city centre, exploring how the individual can be connected to a social system that extends from oneself, into one’s family, their living space, to a town, and then a city.

It begins with the smallest social unit – the individual house – and depicts the lights that stream through them, reflecting the warmth present in relationships between the self and one’s community. Using light, the landscape is represented as transforming through time. The varying brightness of lights combined with the architectural structures are multiplied and layered across the surface of the canvas in a way that widens the viewer’s gaze, similar to panoramic photography.

Between the paintings of day and night within the series, light is shown to gradually turn on with nightfall and gently turn off again with daybreak. In this way, the lights mimic the breath of life, waxing and waning like every one of our lives. Kim’s work attempts to portray the embodied subjectivity of urban life, expressing the sensory feeling of what it means to live in a city.

The Dal Schindell Gallery is located upstairs at Regent College and is open during their regular hours.

Sep 2022

Vancouver Catholic Schools Teaching Opportunities Fair – September 16, 2022 at 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm
MCC Festival for World Relief – September 16, 2022 - September 17, 2022 at 5:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Suzie Ungerleider – September 16, 2022 at 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
City Illuminated – September 17, 2022 - September 28, 2022 at All Day
Hope in Motion – September 17, 2022 at 8:15 am - 12:00 pm
Eastern Europe Worship Night – September 17, 2022 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Music of Displacement – September 17, 2022 at 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Music of Displacement – September 18, 2022 at 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Presentation and Conversation on Healing and Reconciliation with Residential School Survivor, Frances Carlick – September 18, 2022 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Nationwide Prayer for Ukraine – September 19, 2022 at 8:00 am - 9:00 am
Foster Care Info Session – September 20, 2022 at 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Cultivating Transformative Reconciliation: The Canadian TRC Experience in Dialogue with the South African and Nordic Cases – September 21, 2022 - September 22, 2022 at All Day
Dr. Michael Higgins: An Open Inquiry into the Ongoing Clerical Sex Abuse Crisis – September 22, 2022 at 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
SIMinar: Explore Middle East – September 22, 2022 at 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
How to Respond to Anti-Semitism in Christian Biblical Interpretation – September 22, 2022 at 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Somerville Lecture: An Eschatology of Rest: Music and Contemplation as Care for A Restless World – September 22, 2022 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Embodied Spirituality Retreat – September 23, 2022 at 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Matthew Thiessen: Jesus and the Forces of Death – September 23, 2022 at 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Jeff Plankenhorn – September 23, 2022 at 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Walk the Wall (International China Concern) – September 24, 2022 at 12:00 am
Resilient Women Reset: Mini Conference – September 24, 2022 at 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Doctor-Assisted Suicide & Canada's Crisis of Conscience – September 25, 2022 at 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Memorial Evensong for HM Queen Elizabeth II – September 25, 2022 at 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
The Truth-Seeking Mission of the University – September 27, 2022 at 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Taking Action Against the Global Food Crisis – September 27, 2022 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Faith Driven Entrepreneur & Faith Driven Investor: Live – September 28, 2022 at 7:00 am - 1:30 pm
(Un)charitable: Is Charitable Status Being Politicized? – September 28, 2022 at 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Jazz Vespers: Quintessential Jazz – September 28, 2022 at 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
The Scriptorium Grand Opening, Featuring UBC President Santa Ono – September 28, 2022 at 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Jazz Evensong @ Brentwood: Les Djangophiles – September 28, 2022 at 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Dusty Sandals Partner Dinner – September 29, 2022 at 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
604 Chapel – September 30, 2022 at 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Paul Pigat – September 30, 2022 at 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Oct 2022

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