Anglican Church of Canada

The Anglican Church of Canada is the independent, self-governing Anglican church in Canada, a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It has its roots in the Church of England, from which it gradually acquired its own identity, and it was long known as the Church of England in Canada — in full, the Church of England in the Dominion of Canada. Its national governing body, the General Synod, was created by the Canadian dioceses in 1893, and the church adopted its present name in 1955. Like the other churches of the Communion, it is episcopally led, by bishops, and synodically governed, by elected clergy and lay representatives sitting with the bishops.

History

The church's own brief history records that in 1578 a chaplain with Martin Frobisher's Arctic expedition celebrated the Eucharist near present-day Iqaluit, the first Anglican Eucharist in what is now Canada. Anglicanism took hold only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as military chaplains, Loyalists, and British immigrants settled across the colony, and as missionaries ministered to settlers and sought to evangelize Indigenous Peoples.

In 1787 Charles Inglis of Nova Scotia became the first bishop in British North America. As the population grew, more dioceses were formed across the country, and the dioceses in turn created regional groupings and, eventually, a national body. In 1893 the dioceses created the General Synod, which has met regularly ever since, usually every three years. In 1955 the church changed its name from "the Church of England in the Dominion of Canada" to "the Anglican Church of Canada." Today its common prayer is expressed across Canada in many languages, including Inuktitut, French, Spanish, and Cree.

Structure

The General Synod is the governing body of the national church. It consists of the bishops from across Canada together with elected lay and clerical members, it normally meets every three years, and it deals with national and international concerns of the church. The Primate — the church's national pastoral leader, styled with the Most Reverend — is the president of the General Synod and chairs its proceedings. Between sessions, the Council of the General Synod exercises the synod's executive powers.

The church's own description of its structure counts 30 dioceses across Canada, each under the jurisdiction and pastoral care of a diocesan bishop, who may be assisted by suffragan or other assisting bishops. The dioceses are grouped into four ecclesiastical provinces, each headed by a metropolitan (archbishop): the Province of Canada, covering Quebec and Atlantic Canada; the Province of Ontario; the Province of the Northern Lights, covering the Prairie provinces and the Arctic; and the Ecclesiastical Province of British Columbia and Yukon. The northern province was founded in 1875 as the Province of Rupert's Land; its provincial synod voted in 2024 to adopt the name Province of the Northern Lights, in use from 1 June 2024, a change intended to better reflect the Indigenous peoples of the region. Each province and each diocese holds its own synod, and dioceses are made up of parishes, in which the ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons is exercised locally.

Worship

Common worship in the Anglican Church of Canada is rooted in the Book of Common Prayer, and its Anglican liturgy is carried chiefly by two books. The Canadian Book of Common Prayer (1962) is a revision of the 1918 Canadian prayer book, itself the church's first distinctively Canadian revision of the prayer book tradition that began with the Book of Common Prayer (1549). Alongside it stands the Book of Alternative Services (1985), which offers modernized liturgies in contemporary language. Despite its name, the Book of Alternative Services has, by the church's own account, become the primary worship text of the Anglican Church of Canada, while the 1962 book continues in use, not least for its traditional-language services of Baptism, Holy Communion, and the daily offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, with their Lord's Prayer, Nicene Creed, and Ten Commandments.

Residential schools

The church's history includes its part in the Indian residential schools, the boarding schools through which the Government of Canada pursued a policy of assimilation of Indigenous peoples. The Anglican Church of Canada ran residential schools as an agent of the government, in which, as the church has acknowledged, children were removed from their homes and communities and were forbidden to speak their own languages. In 1993 the Primate, Archbishop Michael Peers, offered an apology on behalf of the whole church for the harm done by the residential schools system. The church later participated in negotiating the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, approved in May 2006, which came into effect on 19 September 2007 and under which former students could apply for the Common Experience Payment or for the Independent Assessment Process. The church has also supported healing work with former students, including through the Anglican Healing Fund.

References

• Anglican Church of Canada, "A brief history," anglican.ca.
• Anglican Church of Canada, "The Structure of The Anglican Church of Canada," General Synod 2025, gs2025.anglican.ca.
• Anglican Church of Canada, "Worship books and liturgical texts," anglican.ca.
• Anglican Church of Canada, "Primate urges Prime Minister to apologize for residential schools" (letter of Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, Primate, 27 March 2007), anglican.ca.
• Anglican Church of Canada, "Residential Schools Settlement Agreement comes into effect Sept. 19," anglican.ca, 17 September 2007.
• Anglican Journal, "'God is saying, "See, this is something beautiful"': Province of Rupert's Land changes name to Province of the Northern Lights," 31 May 2024.