Christ Church is the oldest church in Surrey, British Columbia. It was built in 1882, which is very old for this part of the world. I find it evocative to think of those pioneers, just a few of them in this forested landscape, gathering together with the Book of Common Prayer. Their prayer books must have been brought with them from England, as there would surely have been nowhere in British Columbia to buy such a thing. I have been inside this church for a contemplative service on Sunday evenings. The silence was so profound words seemed unnecessary.
After doing some more research, it turns out my imagined picture of the early settlers coming from England was a bit romanticized! The first major landowner here, Abe Huck, was actually from the United States, and the first priest at this church, William Bell, was from Ontario, Canada. See the History of Christ Church (offsite link).
British Columbia was constituted in 1858 and its first capital was Fort Langley, which had been a Hudson's Bay Company trading post since the 1820s. The name British Columbia was coined by Queen Victoria, who had looked at maps of the area and found the region referred to as the Columbia country. To distinguish it from any other Columbia, the new colony would be called British Columbia. This the Queen explained in a letter to then Colonial Secretary Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton -- the same man who had earlier written the "Rosicrucian" novel, Zanoni (offsite link).
Here is St. George's Anglican Church in Fort Langley. It was built in 1901 but has since been extended. The hall behind the church is modern, but if you look carefully at the roof of the church itself, you can see a lighter portion at the front. This marks a recent extension. The original 1901 building was smaller, and forms what is now the back part of the church, with the darker roof.
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