THE MASTER AND THE DOOR

This article about the refinishing of the church doors at Trinity Anglican, Barrie. Different photos of the door have been used for my re-posting of  this article. To see the original photos that ran with this story or to read the article at its' source please click the link below and scroll down to the second page of the paper. I hope you enjoy. -SA  

http://www.trinitybarrie.ca/happenings/30oct11.pdf

THE MASTER AND THE DOOR

What began as a generous bequest from the will of Verdi Wallwin, a much-loved, beautiful and gracious member of Trinity, culminated in a welcoming new entrance to the church at the top of the hill.

Door just after it was painted in 2000

Jack Wallwin, with the help of Jim Laking and Millet Salter, undertook a replacement of the steps and the handrail leading up to the front door.  Then it was time to address the refinishing of the door itself. Jack contacted the very best man for the job, Ben Poernbacher, a master painter and refinisher, who at the age of 14 began a 3 year apprenticeship in Austria, his homeland, and started to work at his trade when only 17!

Ben was used to working on ladders, at 19 he found a job high in the mountain villages of Switzerland where he would paint on rising scaffolds, church steeples as high as 130 feet!  Ben came to Canada by himself in 1957 when he was 24 years old and settled in Toronto. Because skiing was a passion he eventually found his way to Snow Valley and owner, Hans Eder, also Austrian. Soon Barrie became his home.

Door once all paint was removed

Over the years Trinity’s main entrance door had accumulated more than 20 layers of paint.  All of these layers were removed by Ben in painstaking fashion using a propane torch.  To avoid burning the wood, the final two layers were cleaned with paint remover and then scraped by hand.  Once cleaned, scraped and sanded Ben realized that the main part of the door was mahogany with pine mouldings which he stained to match the mahogany and bleached once for uniformity of colour. Then came three coats of clear varnish to complete the natural finishing of the door.

Door as it appears today

The final touch to the completion of the church entrance was the installation of a new threshold. Jack Wallwin provided the wood that had been recently cut from a red oak tree on the Wallwin family farm. Two coats of stain and three of varnish were applied by Ben to protect this very handsome piece of wood. Removal of all the old paint from the door hardware and from the wonderful original light fixture above provided for a fresh new coat of black paint to complete the masterpiece!

It is the hope of all parishioners that the new entrance signals a new vision for Trinity

October 30th 2011

Next Tuesday November 1st is All Saints Day. Let us think about the Saints and who they are. I use the present tense because even though they have left this earth they are very much alive praising God Iin Heaven. They are people who having given their life to the Lord, continued to love him with deep devotion. Often they were called to endure hardship and pain as they lived their lives of bravery and compassion. They were apostles and martyrs, bishops, priests and deacons, scholars and poets missionaries, doctors and nurses, translators and hymn writers, reformers and ordinary folks like you or me.

Why are certain people designed as saints and given special days to remember them? That is so that we may be guided and inspired by their lives, thus enriching the whole church. As Anglicans as we do not pray to the saints or ask them to intercede for us. I cannot help feeling that we do join the heavenly chorus and worship with them. Do we make or canonize these saints? I once asked my father about that. His answer as I remember it was that we could but that saints should be universal in all the churches throughout Christendom. We therefore add to our church calendar new names without enrolling such persons as saints.

We all need to learn more about the saints. First of all, why not turn to our church calendar to be found on page IX in the BCP and page 22 in the BAS. Read through the names of the saints and note the century that they lived in. Many will be familiar, Think about them and try to find out more about them. Turn to September 10 where you will find the name Edmund James Peck missionary to the Inuit. Edmund Peck is our own Trinity Barrie saint. As far as I know he was born here, he certainly grew up here and returned here where he died in 1924. There are still Pecks in Barrie. Mary Grasset Anderson used to tell me that she remembered him as a little girl. Her father knew him. They often met on walks near his home not far from the Shanty Bay Road.

By a strange coincidence, my own mother who was never in Barrie knew him. In fact, they corresponded. In those days, it was not uncommon for people to correspond with missionaries, much as one might correspond with a serviceman overseas today. Alas, I cannot remember much that she told me about him, but I am left with the picture of a lonely figure enduring extreme hardship and physical injury that he had to deal with by himself. Perhaps someone would like to do research about Edmund Peck that we might know more about him and be uplifted and inspired by our own special saint, whose life empowered by the Holy Spirit reflects the great mysteries of Jesus Christ and his Father our Creator

October 23rd 2011

During the past month, I have from time to time, dwelled on the fact that we can never completely comprehend everything about God. That is because I want to help those who, in trying to understand him, become frustrated or just give up. Perhaps it is time to think about the things we do understand or experience. A great deal of our understanding comes from experiencing.

In the first Epistle of St. John the fourth chapter and the end of verse sixteen, we read: God is love. Not God is loving, or God loves us but God is love. That is his very essence. That is who he is. Read that whole wonderful chapter 1 John 4. It tells us that God sent his son as a saviour of the world (Verse 14). Also he has sent us his spirit (Verse 13).

I am going to suggest that you find a moment to sit quietly and remember the moments when you experienced God. Was it a time of great joy? You may also remember him in a time of sorrow. Were you with others or alone? Did you feel God’s presence when you nurtured someone? When you were striving to do his will in thought and word and deed? Perhaps as we experience him in our lives, we understand him more with our minds? Let us never neglect either aspect but go forward in faith looking onto him, growing in his love.

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one

another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God

lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we

abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son

as the Saviour of the world.

1 John 4: 11-14 NRSV