Skip to content

Golden Country: Bringing light into the darkness

Yale had its dark side, but it wasn’t long before people started taking steps to counter it.
11065050_web1_180319-ACC-M-St-John-the-Divine-c.-1880
The Church of St. John the Divine (built in 1863) in Yale c. 1880, with the parsonage — demolished in 1940 — to the left. The church is the oldest one on the B.C. mainland still on its original site.

Although David Williams Higgins wrote that “There were many God-fearing men and women” in Yale at the start of the Gold Rush in 1858, we have seen few of them. However, quite a few people were intent on bringing the word of God to the Interior of B.C., long before construction of the Cariboo Wagon Road, and then the Canadian Pacific Railway, made travel through the province easy.

The first church service was held in Yale in the fall of 1858, with 35 miners in attendance at the Yale court house. A Methodist minister named Ebenezer Robson stopped by Yale and other mining camps later in 1858, navigating the treacherous Fraser River between Hope and Yale—even venturing as far as Hell’s Gate—in a small canoe called Wesleyan. He would preach to anyone who would listen, even stopping by miners’ cabins if that was what it took.

In Yale, missionaries such as Robson were appalled to find that the Sabbath meant little to most people except a day off to purchase supplies and then go to one of the saloons or gambling-houses to have a good time before getting back to the hard business of mining for gold. It is not known how many people were sincerely appreciative of, or touched by, the work of Robson, but at least one man—“Terrible” Jim McLaughlin, Yale’s butcher, and well known as a tyrant, bully, and drunkard—saw the light after taking a beating that left him nearly dead.

McLaughlin greeted Robson fulsomely, and attended the minister’s first church service in Yale, even joining in with the singing of the hymns. After the service he told the missionary, “You know, I used to belong to a choir when I was a young fellow back in Maine.” Either the beating, the church service, or both, did the trick: McLaughlin swore off drinking and gambling from that day forward.

However, there was still no church in Yale, and missionaries could hardly be expected to continue to preach to men in their cabins; nor was the court house an appropriate substitute. In 1859 The Revd. Mr. George Hills carried out services in Yale using a tent as a venue, and services continued to be held in tents and a variety of buildings around town. The residents made it clear that they wanted something more permanent, and it soon became apparent that a ready-made church might just fit Yale’s needs.

An Anglican church called St. John the Divine had been erected in 1859 at a townsite called Derby, near New Westminster, by the Royal Engineers. The church and accompanying parsonage had been designed by The Revd. Mr. William Burton Crickmer, who had been sent to British Columbia from England by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and who had ended up in Derby, then presumed to be a place that might one day be the colony’s capital. Crickmer drew up plans for a church and parsonage, basing the church’s design on that of St. John’s Anglican Church at Deptford, England, which had been Crickmer’s first curacy.

St. John’s was built from California Redwood, and was completed and ready for its first service on Sunday, May 8, 1859. After that, however, Derby went into almost immediate decline, largely due to news that New Westminster would be the capital of the new colony, and not Derby. How fast a decline? The first entry in the Church Register was on July 17, 1859, and the last entry was on January 8, 1860. Crickmer was sent to Yale, and when it came time to erect a church there Governor James Douglas was asked if the church and parsonage could be moved from Derby.

Douglas said no, stating that trying to get the buildings 70 miles upriver against the fast-flowing water of the Fraser River would be impossible. Any church in the town would have to be a newly-constructed one; so at some point in 1862/63 work on a church—also called St. John the Divine—commenced. Once again the Royal Engineers—who were in Yale to work on the Cariboo Wagon Road—were called upon to do the building, constructing the church on the brow of a hill overlooking the Fraser.

The church was constructed in the Gothic Revival style, and many of its original features, including rafters, woodwork, and nails, remain intact. Many of the artifacts within it are also original, and the fact that it still stands on its original site on Albert Street, beside the site of the parsonage (which was demolished in 1940), provides context as to what the layout of the town of Yale—much changed over the decades due to fire and demolition—was like during its heyday.

The first service at St. John the Divine Anglican Church in Yale was held in April 1863, and the church officially closed in 1976. While the first Church of St. John, built in ill-fated Derby, is older, and still survives, it has been relocated several times since its construction. Yale’s Church of St. John can lay claim to being the oldest surviving church on the mainland of British Columbia still on its original site (two older churches on Vancouver Island are still on their original sites).

Some sources claim that the church boasts a connection with Lady Jane Franklin, widow of famed Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin. She is known to have visited Yale, travelling as far north along the Fraser as Lady Franklin Rock, named in her honour, and it is said she put members of her expedition to work constructing pews and choir-stalls for St. John’s. However, Lady Franklin visited Yale in 1861, before the church was built, so it seems, alas, an unlikely tale.

The church now forms part of the Yale Historic Site and is carefully preserved and maintained. It can be viewed when the site is open during the summer season, or by appointment at other times.



editorial@accjournal.ca

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter