HISTORIC CHURCH RAVAGED BY FIRE

St. Anne's blaze destroys century-old murals by Group of Seven artists

- ILYAS HUSSEIN AND MICHELE HENRY

The fire marshal is investigating the blaze early Sunday morning at St. Anne’s Anglican Church on Gladstone Avenue.

When Don Beyers found out his church was on fire early Sunday morning, he threw on the first pair of pants he could find and raced — on foot to the site.

But it was too late. “Fire was already spewing out the dome at the top,” Beyers said of the roof at St. Anne’s Anglican Church in Little Portugal, where he has been parish priest for three years. “And I knew there was nothing we could do.”

Sixteen to 18 murals of Jesus’ life painted by three members of Canada’s iconic Group of Seven dotted the walls and ceilings of the church, Beyers said, and were likely all reduced to rubble. The four-alarm fire erupted at the building on Gladstone Avenue, between College and Dundas streets, just before 8 a.m.

Most of the church was gone. “I was crushed,” Beyers said. “I just started to cry.”

The “priceless” paintings, completed in 1923, were what Beyers called “a gem of Canadian culture.”

It’s “an extraordinary loss,” he said later in the morning to media outside the church.

“This area means a lot to us. While this is incredibly devastating for my congregation, it’s devastating for this community,” he said.

“I cannot express enough how far-reaching this church fire is going to be.”

`“We have our fingers crossed,” Toronto Fire Services division commander Steven Darling said from a laneway near the still-smouldering building.

“But it’s highly unlikely there’s anything we can save inside the building.”

Toronto Fire hasn’t determined the cause of the blaze, noting that the fire marshal’s office and its teams will be investigating over the coming days.