In April of 1865, All Saints’ original building committee was appointed. A site for the new church had been secured on the north side of Dundas St. on property that had been previously used as grazing ground for sheep. In the months following, masons and carpenters would create a gathering place for another kind of flock. As a small tribute to this fact, the architectural lithograph included a trio of sheep gently grazing in the foreground.
The building of All Saints’ church was an enormous and serious undertaking for our first founders. The estimate for the building project in 1865 was a total of $7000. 00. On Christmas Day the year before building began (1864), the Rev. J.D. Cayley’s pastoral address included the following exhortation regarding subscription to the Church Building Fund. While the language is elegant, the message is clear—everyone was expected to chip in:
It must be considered the bounden duty of every Churchman to contribute according to his ability to the extension of the Church within our borders; this is a duty which we owe, not to man, but to God; and therefore it is to be looked at not from any local or narrow point of view, but in a broad Christian spirit: if another church is necessary for the welfare of the Church, or for the accommodation of the congregation, no member of either can be free from a sacred obligation to give and to “lay by him in store” for the purpose “as God hath prospered him;” remembering that we are God’s stewards, and must render up an account of the spending of the means with which He has blessed us.
