The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2006, Qupperneq 7

Vol. 60 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
49
church was briefly served by a student
minister from New York City before the
Lake Winnipeg circuit ceased to have a res-
ident minister of its own. For the next
twenty-five years, Rev. Philip M.
Petursson travelled from Winnipeg to con-
duct occasional services, with declining fre-
quency. Mostly, he came to bury the dead.
A few faithful souls — mostly women —
maintained the institutional structures and
cared for the building itself. The church
was rented to a conservative Christian con-
gregation — something that would have
been unthinkable to the founders, as neigh-
bourly a thing as it was to do - and the
building slowly deteriorated through
neglect. Occasionally, someone would be
married there or have a child christened
under Unitarian auspices, but even memo-
rial services shifted to the funeral home. In
1981, the ninetieth anniversary of Rev.
Magnus Skaptason’s “Easter Sermon” was
marked with a special service at the church.
By this time, the legal membership had
reached single digits.
When the church’s fundamentalist ten-
ants vacated the building in 1992, its fate
was uncertain. Some feared the building
would crumble into dust, while others
imagined selling it, recognizing that it
would likely become a bistro or pizzeria if
that happened. Still others felt that the
building should be used for some commu-
nity purpose, so the trustees made the
church available to the Gimli Theatre
Association as a home for the A-Spire
Theatre. Around this same time, the few
remaining Unitarians in the area were
audacious enough to imagine holding regu-
lar services again! We planned three ser-
vices during the summer of 1994 to see if
there was any realistic hope of revival. In
doubt about the reception we might
receive, we recruited a dozen or so out-
siders to make sure we had a “congrega-
tion” on the first Sunday. To our surprise
and delight, sixty-one people showed up
for the service, which featured a sermon
based on the parable of the man who built
his house upon sand. Amidst the shifting
sands of fate, perhaps there was still a little
outcropping of bedrock upon which we
might rebuild.
Buoyed by the response from local res-
idents and cottagers, some members began
to dream of restoring the church to its orig-
inal splendour, whereas, only months
before, there had been fears it might be
demolished. The restoration of the nearby
Gimli Public School was nearing comple-
tion and members of the Gimli Heritage
Committee expressed interest in undertak-
ing work on the church as their next pro-
ject. Inspired by the success of the public
school project, work began on the church
in 1996, guided by members of the
Heritage Committee with support from
church members and the Gimli Theatre
Association. The congregation dipped into
its reserve funds, which had accumulated
over many years of modest revenue and
limited expenses, and generous grants were
received from the Province of Manitoba’s
cultural affairs department and the Thomas
Sill Foundation.
While the exterior of the church was
restored as closely as possible to how it
looked a century ago (albeit with improved
accessibility), the interior was remodelled
to meet the needs of the building’s dual
purpose as both a house of worship and a
community theatre. The chancel and choir
loft gave way to a stage, the pews were
milled into ceiling beams and replaced with
comfortable upholstered chairs, the bal-
cony became the light and sound booth for
the theatre company and the pulpit became
a moving pedestal - doubling as the “box
office” for theatre events. The church’s use
as a theatre is fully in keeping with its his-
tory. From its earliest years, the church
was home to Gimli’s Menningarfelag, or
Cultural Society, which hosted plays and
concerts, socials and a reading club. The
promotion of cultural pursuits has ever
been part of the mission of the Unitarian
church.
Summer services at the Gimli
Unitarian Church are now entering their
thirteenth season. The sanctuary is com-
fortably full on the “odd” Sundays of the
summer months when the congregation
meets for worship and it seems likely that
future years will see an expansion of the
season and an increase in frequency. The
congregation is an eclectic and partly tran-