Kashechewan Church building condemned

On Sunday, Jan. 21 I announced to the congregation of St. Paul's, Kashechewan that the whole of the church building, including worship space, parish hall, and rectory apartment, would have to be closed down due to mold infestation. Just following my December visit to Kashechewan the whole of the building was sprayed for mold. The spraying will have killed all mold spores in the air. However, there is mold behind the wallboards. And except in winter there is often water flowing into the basement. Hence it is that with the warmer weather the mold will be growing again. Archbishop Lawrence was forced into making a difficult decision.

The last service in the church building will be held on April 1. There will be confirmation on that Sunday, and Archbishop Lawrence will be present.

What will the congregation do? At a subsequent meeting of the congregation it was decided that work would be done to try and bring in a couple of trailers on the winter road. The plan is that the trailers would be used for the worship space, initially. Later on the congregation hopes to build a log church building, and to then use the trailers as a parish hall. As the winter road will close sometime in March, this does not leave much time to work things out. One of the challenges will be to find the funding for the trailers. The cost of bringing in the trailers is still something that is being worked out, but it is hoped that in the next few days the full cost of the trailers being set up will be known.

In Kashechewan at this time there is a real difficulty in finding other space to worship in. For example the elementary school building in Kashechewan, St. Andrew's School, has been closed for quite a while because of a mold problem. Currently the elementary school and highschool students are both using the highschool classrooms. The elementary school uses the classrooms for the morning and the early afternoon. The highschool uses the classrooms for the late afternoon and evening. The mold problem is one which is a common problem in these parts.