'It's a tragedy for Canadian art'

Community members share memories as they mourn loss of historic St. Anne's church

- EMILY FAGAN

Rev. Hannah Johnston, one of two priests at St. Anne's, says she doesn't think "it's sunk in yet how much has been lost" after Sunday's fire.

Rising from the brick walls of St. Anne's Anglican Church, wooden beams curve above the scorched ruins the skeletal remains of a domed ceiling that held priceless murals from Canada's Group of Seven, prior to the four-alarm fire that consumed the church Sunday morning Many of the stained glass windows are shattered, and burnt embers from the blaze have landed on the curb of Dundas Street, several hundred metres away.

Anything on the dome was destroyed in the fire, according to the Toronto Fire Department. The fire is not being investigated as arson, police say.

Terrance Young, 71, stared through a chain-link fence next to the church's parking lot on Monday morning as fire crews ascended in the bucket of a crane to view the site from above, investigating the cause and extent of the fire.

This wasn't just a place of worship for Young it had once been his home. He moved into the rectory at eight years old when his father Canon George Young became the church's reverend in the 1960s, and sang in the choir until he was 20.

"I see a lot of ghosts," he said. "This is a tragedy for the community and it's a tragedy for Canadian art."

The Byzantine Revival-style church was a National Historic Site, a place for performances and art, a space to which even those who were not parishioners felt drawn. On Monday morning, many came to peer past the police line and through fences to see what remained of St. Anne's-some saying, in hushed tones, "what a shame, what a loss."