| Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register,
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 Joshua and Liam Bird get their lifejackets on for the boat ride back to the cottage after Mass at St. John the Divine as Fr. Eric Sikora greets parishioners. Church is part of cottage life for the Bird family. (Photo by Michael Swan)
But for many cottagers the sabbath of summer vacation isn’t complete without a Sunday visit to a mission church.
“Visiting those missions, which I do on a yearly basis, I go home edified,” said Bishop Nicola De Angelis, whose Peterborough diocese includes the Muskoka region. “I see so much faith.”
Marie Baker, who spends her summers with her family in Muskoka and attending church at St. John the Divine in Morinus near Port Carling, doesn’t know why anybody would be surprised that Catholics attend Mass while on vacation.
“We always go to church. It’s what you do... That’s the nice thing about being Catholic. You can go anywhere and find people who think it’s important to give an hour to God,” said the grade school teacher at St. Joseph’s School in Richmond Hill, Ont. “God doesn’t take vacations.”
Sylvia Bird has been attending St. John the Divine for 20 years. Most summer Sundays she and her family tie their boat to the dock below the pretty white church with a statue of Our Lady out front, watching over Lake Rosseau. The church is so striking it attracts tourists with no intention of attending Mass. They just want to see the beautiful wooden church high on the rocks above the lake.
“This is something special,” said Bird.
The first weekend in August Fr. Eric Sikora will conduct the annual blessing of the boats at St. John the Divine and St. Michael’s in the village of Rosseau. Originally from Buffalo, Sikora has put in almost 30 years serving in the small churches and communities in the northern part of the diocese. There’s nowhere else he’d rather be — even in the harsher, lonelier half of the year when the cottagers are gone.
The churches in cottage country are anything but empty in summer. At St. Michael’s, a converted butcher shop, parishioners report that some weekends they’re left standing on the doorstep straining to hear the sermon and slipping into line for communion.
Nor are the parishes mere gatherings of strangers, said Paula Mullen. Mullen is a year-round resident who was born in nearby MacTier. Her family has known Sikora for 28 years, since she was a girl learning guitar by playing in church. She and Janet Fellner have played guitar and led the singing at St. Michael’s every summer for 15 years.
“People come because they know it’s relaxed. It’s not stuffy,” she said.
And there’s a real family atmosphere at St. Michael’s in Rosseau. There are probably more children in St. Michael’s pews than in many city parishes, she said.
St. Michael’s rusted roof will need replacing soon, but the Rosseau church will have to get in line behind a few other priorities — the foundation of St. Joseph’s in Bracebridge for one.
It will be up to the cottagers to come up with the $20,000 to $25,000 it would take to replace the St. Michael’s roof, but they already have the admiration of their bishop, who is impressed by their dedication.
“On holidays there’s no routine which holds. Only the conviction to come,” said De Angelis. “The fact speaks volumes. It must really mean something to them.”
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Michael Swan, The Catholic Register |
| About the author: |
| Michael Swan is Associate Editor of The Catholic Register. He is an award-winning writer and photographer and holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University.
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