Église Unie St-Marc (''St. Mark United Church'') is a small but historic church in

Ottawa Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. It is the main church for francophone Protestants in the Ottawa Gatineau region. French speaking Protestants are a very small minority in Canada, but one with a history dating back to early

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...

settlers.

History

The Ottawa church was founded as a

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...

congregation in 1874, and its first building was located in the Lebreton Flats. It joined the

United Church of Canada The United Church of Canada (UCC; ) is a mainline Protestant denomination that is the largest Protestant Christian denomination in Canada and the second largest Canadian Christian denomination after the Catholic Church in Canada. The United Chu ...

upon its creation in 1925. In the 1960s its original home was expropriated by the federal government, along with the other buildings on the flats. The church then moved to its current building in

Centretown Centretown is a neighbourhood in Somerset Ward, in central Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is defined by the city as "the area bounded on the north by Gloucester Street and Lisgar Street, on the east by the Rideau Canal, on the south by the Qu ...

at the corner of Elgin and 142 Lewis streets, next to Minto Park. This small building had been built in 1900 to house the First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa, but seeking larger premises they moved to the western part of the city and sold the building to St-Marc in 1965. Jacques de Réland had served as minister from 1982. In 2021, heritage work orders were issued to fix cracks in the tower. By 2024, the tower had been demolished, and the congregation had moved to the former St. Paul's Eastern United Church building.https://www.facebook.com/story.php/?story_fbid=951092173719317&id=100064556298122

External links

Official site

References

*''Exploring Ottawa: an architectural guide to the nation's capital.'' Harold Kalman and John Roaf. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983. {{DEFAULTSORT:Eglise Unie St-Marc United Church of Canada churches in Ottawa Franco-Ontarian organizations 19th-century Presbyterian churches 19th-century churches in Canada