In 1911, before Jasper was even called Jasper, a young reverend named David Simpson sat in a pool hall, meeting with a small group of worshippers. What was then the town of Fitzhugh was barely a town—with few buildings that weren’t tents and a not much more than a whole lot of mud—but residents still wanted a place to worship.
The next year, in 1912, the government of Canada purchased a tent for Anglicans and Catholics to hold services in, and a few years later church buildings began popping up around town. In 1914, one of those was a small building housing the “Union Church.”
The Union Church began in Jasper as an alternative to the Anglican Church, and its congregation consisted primarily of Methodists and Presbyterians, although everyone was welcome to attend.
In 1914 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle laid the cornerstone of the building that would come to be known as “The Little White Church in the Rockies” during a visit to Jasper with his family. He reflected on the experience in later writings.
“Christianity was apostolic in its simplicity and in its freedom from strife ... Two churches were being built, the pastor in each case acting also as head mason and carpenter. One, the corner-stone of which I had the honour of laying, was to be used in turn by several Nonconformist bodies.
“To the ceremony came the Anglican parson, grimy from his labours on the opposition building, and prayed for the well-being of his rival. The whole function, with its simplicity and earnestness, carried out by a group of ill-clad men standing bareheaded in a drizzle of rain, seemed to me to have in it the essence of religion,” he wrote.
And through its history, the Little White Church has housed the people who practice that religion. Originally, it could sit only about 50 people, and its size would cause trouble for its congregation throughout the 20th century.
Already in 1925 a committee had been struck to begin fundraising for an expansion. That extension wouldn’t come for another two years, during which the United Church of Canada was formed, bringing together Presbyterians, Methodist and Congregational denominations, and the “Union Church” had voted to join.
A new church didn’t solve space problems, and in 1928 efforts began to find a new location. But a series of misfortunes ensured the Little White Church continued to stand, after three reverends respectively suffered a sudden death, stroke and nervous breakdown, leaving the church without a pastor, and relocation plans on the backburner.
More than ten years later the Banff-Jasper Highway significantly increased traffic through Jasper, and since there was no prospect for relocation, the church was spruced up to meet the new volume of visitors. Part of that was a coat of gleaming white paint.
That paint job inspired Reverend N.D. McInnes’s sermon, entitled “The Little White Church on the Corner,” which would in turn inspire the building’s future name. That name would be written in media across the country, as the church tried—and eventually failed—to raise money to expand.
It wasn’t until Oct. 3, 1965 that the issue finally came to rest, when the United Church sold the building to Jasper’s newly formed Baptist Church for $17,500 dollars.
The building that the church had been trying to leave for so long proved to have a strong hold on the hearts of its congregation, as many left the United Church after the sale so they could stay and worship in the building that had for so long been their spiritual home.
The United Church would survive, however. After briefly combining with the Anglican Church, it would construct a new church building, which still stands today.
Meanwhile, the Baptists got to work renovating the Little White Church, adding more rooms, a stage, and fixing up the basement.
The basement renovation would turn out to be a major event in the building’s history, after the church’s pastor created the Bedford Inn. The space was set up in the style of 16th-centaury England, and named Bedford Inn in honour of the hometown of John Bunyan, who wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress.
The cozy Inn became incredibly popular in the ‘70s and ‘80s, drawing young Christians from across the country, who wanted to be a part of it.
One of those people was a young Ontario student named Paul Krywicki, whose friend convinced him and several others to leave Ontario for the summer and go to Jasper in 1987, to be a part of the ministry at the Inn.
After coming for a couple of summers, Krywicki decided to stay in Jasper permanently, and still lives here today.
Krywicki explained that the Inn was a “creative alternative to the bar scene,” where young people gathered to hang out. At the height of its popularity, more than 100 people would routinely cram into the tiny space, where they would sing and play music together.
The ministry stopped in the early ‘90s, and shortly after the Inn was used as the set of the pub for the TV show Destiny Ridge. The space still exists today, and several groups still use it as a meeting place.
It was a place to congregate in the 40s during the war; a gathering place for young people in the ‘80s and the home of the town’s toy library less than ten years ago. The Little White Church has been a part of the community for a hundred years now, providing a space to gather, or support the people of Jasper in dozens of different ways.
“We often think of the building as the church, but really the people are the church,” Baptist reverend Roy Nickel said in an interview last week. Krywicki echoed the sentiment, explaining how his strongest memories of the Little White Church are of the people—especially the visitors that continue to come from across the world.
Last summer, the woman who originally convinced him to travel to Jasper in 1978 returned to play piano in the church, proving the lure of the building—and the community it’s fostered for 100 years—is hard to resist.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Little White Church’s construction, a service will be held Sept. 7 at 10:00 a.m., which will include a presentation on the building’s history, and displays looking at its past. The service is open to anyone who wishes to attend, and is followed by a barbecue and an open house.
Trevor Nichols
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