The crisis at McDougall did not happen overnight

The crisis at McDougall did not happen overnight

A century of the congregation's history mirrors downtown Edmonton’s decline

McDougall Methodist Church, 1870s, as depicted by
Ella May Walker, 1892-1960, musician, artist,
author and Edmonton history advocate.

The early years
McDougall is the oldest protestant congregation in Edmonton and its first church was the first building constructed outside Fort Edmonton, in 1873. 


The current building is the third church on the site. It was designed by prominent Edmonton architect M.A. Magoon in the Italianate style and built in 1910 for $70,000, at the outset of one of Edmonton’s early real estate booms. 

Edmonton's population boom and bust, 1910-1914
(click to enlarge.)

McDougall was planned to seat 2,000, but the seating was reduced to 1,600 to save money even as the population of Edmonton was literally doubling every few years, from 20,000 people as the church was being built to over 50,000 in 1912. The congregation was quite large and during the height of that boom, McDougall had 2,000 members. 

The crash

In 1913 the city 's real estate market crashed, Edmonton's overall population fell rapidly from a high of 72,000 in 1914 to under 54,000 two years later, and the congregation's numbers began a long, slow decline. Edmonton's elite had begun to relocate from the downtown core to Glenora and Highlands in 1910 when the church was built, and the general population began to migrate to the city's streetcar suburbs. World War I and then the flu epidemic added to the losses. The depression and World War II followed.

The '50s baby boom brought a revival with Sunday School
population in the hundreds and total congregation
numbers back up to 2,000.

The baby boom

The post-war years saw a great revival with over 500 students in the Sunday School and McDougall very nearly returned to the heights of its early years. But the last half of the century, with its further flight to the suburbs and decay of Edmonton's core, was looming.

The building
So what happens when you are the stewards of one of Edmonton’s most important public gathering buildings and concert halls and your congregation has been in decline for most of 100 years? McDougall’s struggle to maintain, restore, and repurpose its building has been a long one.

During the Great Depression McDougall conducted a city-wide drive to retire its mortgage - it had paid $70,000 on its original construction loan of $50,000 but still owed $40,000. $22,000 was raised, the mortgage holder forgave $20,000, and the mortgage was burned by two daughters of George McDougall while the choir sang the Hallelujah chorus.

McDougall with its 1st church alongside

The church saw the city through a second World War, offering sanctuary to visiting soldiers,  and collecting blood at a Red Cross plasma centre established in the facility. After the war the congregation's need to serve its families led to a fundraising drive to build the church annex, a major rebuild of the pipe organ, and alterations to the West entrance with the front brick arches removed. The congregation also restored its first church to turn it into a museum. A number of other building renovations were also undertaken. Yet, after the bulk of the baby boom moved through, by the mid 60s the church’s membership had declined substantially to fewer than 600 and the congregation started to face the hard realities of maintaining an aging building.

'70s redevelopment effort
The first effort to address church redevelopment occurred in the 1970s with discussions with Alberta College, constructed at the turn of the century alongside McDougall on land provided by the church and long operating independently. Edmonton lost many of its heritage buildings at this time, including others designed by McDougall’s architect, in a wave of demolition and modern building that saw the Carnegie-funded Library fall to the Telus tower, the King Edward Hotel give way to Manulife, the Post Office replaced by the Westin Hotel, the old Woodward’s department store and the old courthouse to Edmonton Centre, and the Tegler Building to the Bank of Montreal.

Some of Edmonton's lost buildings: Library (left) King Edward Hotel (right.)
The Macleod building (centre) was saved.

It was during this period of revisioning of Edmonton’s downtown that saw discussions with several developers. A contract was signed with Carlson to build a high-rise and a new, smaller fourth church on Macdonald Drive. The McDougall United Church Foundation was planned to manage the venture. The church negotiated historic status for its 1873 building and moved it to Fort Edmonton Park. But another financial crisis loomed and Carlson withdrew from the contract, forfeiting its $30,000 deposit. Although this was not the intent of its stewards, it meant the Church building survived the reconstruction carnage intact. But McDougall was left standing in the midst of a downtown in serious decline.

Edmonton, 1971, McDougall can be seen in the top right quadrant,
increasingly dwarfed by high rises as the city moves to
demolish most of its early century buildings. 

'80s recession
As the congregation moved into the 1980s, it continued to struggle with falling attendance and the challenges of operating a church in a vastly diminished downtown. Edmonton’s core was gutted by the disappearance of dozens of storefront businesses when Jasper Avenue was closed for the construction of the LRT, and the opening of West Edmonton Mall in 1981. 

Revitalization efforts fail
The renovation and repair efforts continued at McDougall, even as other heritage buildings suffered – the MacDonald Hotel was shuttered. The Canadian Pacific Railway Building sat vacant, eventually to be torn down except for its two-story facade. Jasper Avenue was littered with boarded up buildings, marred by garbage and graffiti. The MacLeod Building and others were saved from demolition by the province which purchased them in 1980. During this time McDougall established funds for specific ventures such as an elevator to ensure disabled access to the sanctuary. This space had long been used for public events and concerts – everything from University of Alberta convocations to hosting the city’s opera and symphony – and disabled access was necessary to continue to play this role.

In the late '80s after the United Church of Canada's General Council decision to extend equal rights to the LGBTQ community as candidates for ministry, the church lost four board members and many church-goers transferred to other churches, taking their plate contributions and endowments with them. The gutting of this revenue source was a blow but even so, the lift fund drive was successful and in 1989 it was installed. In 1990 the Church opened its doors for the First Night Festival, participating eagerly in one of the city’s many efforts to revitalize the its downtown. But Edmonton's downtown revitalization stalled for another two decades – even as late as in 2001 a Journal article inventoried 11 vacant or nearly vacant major buildings in the core.

Alberta College, old entrance, with the new
building and Telus Tower in the background.

Alberta College proceeds without McDougall
Alberta College proceeded without McDougall with the redevelopment of its property and its new building was completed in the early 90s. The resulting parking-lot revenue generated replacement funds for McDougall’s diminished congregation and covered an increasing percentage of its operating costs, and the church was able to rebuild the main stained glass window above the West entrance. McDougall opened its doors for Edmonton's Metropolitan Community Church, serving the LGBTQ community.

St. Stephen's/McDougall downtown concept fails
In 1995 a church committee again examined the church’s role in the downtown, and the congregation accepted the amalgamation of the Norwood United Church the following year. In 1997 the church formed a partnership with St. Stephen’s College, which McDougall had founded almost 100 years before, to bring the facility into the downtown. A proposal “A Vision with Spirit” was made that would see the renovated church building accommodating both partners. However, partnership efforts did not result in outside financial support and the Church withdrew.

Communitas/McDougall high-rise concept fails
In the late 90s the McDougall Place Development Committee was formed to explore the

ArtsHab, a current development
project w/Communitas

construction of a high-rise building around the church. McDougall explored this idea with Communitas Group, a cooperative/sustainable developer, but the project did not proceed.

In June, 2000, the Alberta government arranged for Alberta College to be merged with MacEwan University, and McDougall went through a period of governance review.

U of A/McDougall don't get past MOU stage
In the first decade of the new century, as Edmonton’s downtown revitalization efforts finally began to bear fruit, the congregation's efforts to address the need to preserve the building were also revitalized. McDougall entered into negotiations with the University of Alberta to repurpose the building to provide shared space for McDougall’s needs and an additional downtown presence for the U of A. A detailed business plan for redevelopment that included the Alberta College campus, a repurposed building with offices for the church and the University, outreach to the city's disadvantaged including the provision of musical instruction to aboriginal children in the core, and the continued use of the acoustically significant performance space, was prepared. Costs for rehabilitation were pegged at $8-10M. A Memorandum Of Understanding was signed, but the University choose not to proceed. As the MOU became dormant, discussions were also undertaken with MacEwan University, which declined McDougall overtures.

McDougall approaches City of Edmonton

In the late fall of 2013 discussions began with the City of Edmonton. Council's executive committee asked for a detailed report on the building's restoration needs by June 2014. In February 2014 McDougall's congregation approved $150,000 for urgent repairs to the south tower but building permit concerns arose. The city's report was also delayed several times and was finally brought before council's executive committee in February 2015. The report shows an immediate need for $1.5-2M over 18 months for urgent repairs and $16-21M over five-seven years. The administration is to continue work with the Church, Presbytery, and the community to find a solution by November 2015.

Want to help save this building? Check out Friends of McDougall.

Sources:

Edmonton Journal archives

City of Edmonton archives

City of Edmonton population, historical

McDougall Annual Report 2013

McDougall United Church “A Brief Chronology 1873-2003, compiled by John G. Wright, Church Archivist, 2003
Archiseek.com, (dedicated to Irish architects)
Yeg is Home: The Legacy of Magoon and MacDonald (originally published in Real Estate Weekly)
Edmonton's Architectural Heritage


Over the last 10 years I have been attending church on Sunday mornings. Some of you might know me as a Lutheran, attending Concordia and singing in the choir, and more interested in the biology professor's sermon at daily chapel than in anything delivered by Missouri Synod preachers. Others might know me as a pretty secular individual, found at brunch on Sunday morning sitting across from my late husband reading newspapers, with a crowd of slightly bored children clamouring for more whipped cream on their waffles. I know there are a lot of raised eyebrows in my circle of friends and acquaintances these days when they learn that I teach Sunday School at McDougall United.

When my current husband Rob McLauchlin and I got together we talked about how we grew up in a church community and about how we hadn't been raising our children the same way, for a variety for reasons - no equality for women, the shaming of sinners, and the aggressive rejection of the LGBTQ community. 

We're opera lovers and a Sunday brunch opera event led us to McDougall, which counts members of the Edmonton Opera Chorus amongst its choir. We were married at McDougall and we've been attending ever since. 

I'm hugely passionate about the revitalization of our urban core, and I'm a history geek too, so it is natural for me to want dip my toe into the vast repository of McDougall United Church history. The congregation has been worshiping at the site of the current church for 143 years! What I have learned about the congregation's past is very relevant to the discussion that is taking place today about the future of the McDougall Church building. This article a very brief sketch of just a little slice of 143 years of rich history.

-- Jodine Chase, March 1, 2015