Americans on Canada Day

By Margaret Stallkamp

Five members of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church travelled to Elkwater, Alberta, to join Canadians celebrating Canada Day at St. Margaret’s Church. They joined with Canadian neighbors of Father David Carter. Carter welcomed his across the border friends, hoisting an American flag beside the Canadian one outside the historic church, founded in 1907. During the service, he remarked on the friendship between the two countries.

Father Carter has held Canada Day services for many years in conjunction with cleaning up rural cemeteries in the region. (St. Margaret’s Church is surrounded by a cemetery dating from the early 1900s.) In the 1990s Father Carter was supply priest at St. Mark’s in Havre and also did services at First Presbyterian. Before his retirement, David Carter was dean of the Calgary Cathedral and Speaker of the House of the Alberta Legislative Assembly. In the 1990s, people from Havre began attending the Canadian service, which is usually about a week before the Fourth of July.

Music at the service is on a volunteer basis, with a variety of instruments — guitars, saxophones, accordions — but often the familiar hymns including “Battle Hymn of the Republic” are sung without accompaniment. The church, however, does have an antique pump organ and this year Diana Smith of Havre spied it and volunteered to play. (Evidence suggests that the organ dates from 1914.) The church hosts occasional weddings, baptisms, and Canadian Thanksgiving and Veterans Day commemorations.