OUR HISTORY

St. Luke's was founded in Williamsville, then part of the Township of Kingston in 1890. Lots were purchased on the north side of Princess Street and the west side of Nelson Street for $2100 and the cornerstone for the building of the new church was formally laid by the Right Rev. J.T. Lewis on June 19th, 1890. The first service took place later that same year on October 1st. St. Luke's became a parish independent of the Parish of the Cataraqui on January 8th, 1904. As a new parish, St. Luke's faced the demands of growth - an expansion was agreed upon and the enlargement and refurbishment of the church was completed by March 1910. St. Luke's, like other congregations, struggled through the depression years in the 1930s but by 1947 they were visioning a new parish hall which was realized in May 1957.

The original church survived until 1990 when it was torn down and rebuilt under the guidance of the Rev. Vern MacPherson. St. Luke's is still an anchor in the Williamsville community and still holds firm to its origins in mission and outreach.

Acknowledgement of Traditional Territory

This 'acknowledgement of territory' statement is a recognition of the traditional inhabitants of the land on which St. Luke’s is located.

To acknowledge this traditional territory is to recognize its longer history, one predating the establishment of the earliest European colonies. It is also to acknowledge this territory’s significance for the Indigenous peoples who lived, and continue to live, upon it and whose practices and spiritualties were tied to the land.

When the first Europeans began to arrive in Southern Ontario in the early 1600s, the north shore of Lake Ontario and the area originally known as Katarokwi (Kingston) were a shifting home to both the Huron-Wendat Peoples and the Haudenosaunee (pronounced: Hoe-den-oh-‘show-nee) people of the Five Nations/Iroquois confederacy.

Alongside these peoples, in a broad band running from modern-day Quebec, along the St. Lawrence, around the Great Lakes and into what is now Northern Ontario, Michigan, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Minnesota, lived the Anishinaabek (pronounced: A-nish-in-‘a-beg). This name means Original People or Good People in the Anishinaabemowin language.

The Anishinaabek comprise the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Odawa (Ottawa), Chippewa, Mississauga, Saulteaux, Nipissing and Algonquin people. This area specifically was inhabited by the Mississauga and Algonquin peoples. These peoples all speak the Anishinaabemowin language, which is a member of the Algonquian language family.

After the British established a more permanent colony along the north shore of Lake Ontario in 1758, in particular in the Katarokwi area, the Mississauga (who had established a community in the region in the early 1700s) ceded Kingston and the surrounding territory to the British Crown in 1783 with the signing of the Crawford Purchase. Trading between the Iroquois Confederacy and Anishinaabe peoples continued in Katarokwi, however, even after the American-based United Empire Loyalists, sympathizers with the British during the American Revolution of 1776, moved peacefully into what the British called Upper Canada in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

The Iroquois (Six Nations) Confederacy, known widely by the Cayuga word Haudenosaunee, meaning the People of the Longhouse, today have five communities ranging across southern Ontario, eastern Quebec and south into New York State. The Tyendinaga Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte is Kingston’s closest First Peoples reserve community, and the only government-recognized territory within the Kingston region. The Kingston Indigenous community continues to represent the area’s Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee roots. There is also a significant Métis community and there are First Peoples from other Nations across Turtle Island present here today.

Acknowledgment taken from: https://www.queensu.ca/encyclopedia/t/traditional-territories