Our Church

 

I'd like to introduce you to our family's church.  

St Andrew's Cathedral in Victoria BC is a Heritage site. It's where I sat in the third floor choir loft as a toddler while my father sang in the choir. I still remember the size of the pipe organ.  It's where we attended church for the 21 years I lived in Victoria and it's the church 

that my great grandfather was the original contractor for.

AEneas McDonald (spelled differently in these photos of newspaper articles), had an inheritance from France and with that to back him, was awarded the contract to build St Andrew's.  He brought marble columns from Ottawa, Ontario and they were erected at the sides of the church doors but at some point his partner ran away with the rest of their funds and he lost the contract.
My great grandfather, shown here with his youngest daughter and my father, was a skilled carpenter and worked for many years to help complete the cathedral.  My grandmother remembered climbing up seven flights of stairs into the spire to take her father his lunch. My grandmother's aunt was hired as an organist.

In my mosaic below, the top left and bottom right photos were taken by my grandfather. The others are from the BC Archives which is a fascinating place to look for historical pictures of British Columbia.

St Andrew's is a church filled with memories for my family and we are proud to say that our great grandfather had a hand in building such a wonderful cathedral.


All my pictures  and collages can be enlarged by clicking once.

Hope you're enjoying a wonderful Easter weekend! I'd like to thank Olga for teaching me how to dye eggs in a lovely way.  I had been thinking of using onion skins but was so pleased that Olga shared her method of imprinting parsley leaves on her Easter Eggs.  I used celery leaves and I think it would work well with any small leaf or flower.  I only tried a few eggs so I just used the skins from 4 or 5 purple onions.  I had hard boiled my eggs first so the lighter one was just dipped in the onion water for a minute or so.  The darker eggs were boiled in the onion skin water after I had boiled the skins and let the water cool.  Stop by to see Olga at her Home and Garden Blog to read her full instructions if you have time today.  You'll be glad you did!