| The
Arrival of Antle to BC |
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| John Antle was born in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland in 1865 into a family of fishermen and sealers. At seventeen, Antle left home. He worked as a school teacher while studying for the clergy. Antle was ordained into the priesthood in 1892 and worked at a number of maritime postings before heading west with his family to Roslyn, Washington in 1897 and then to Anacortes in 1898. |
In December of 1899, John Antle became the first rector of the Fairview Parish in Vancouver, B.C. where he built the Holy Trinity Church from the ground up.
No sooner had Antle established himself in Vancouver when he was struck by the need to establish a coastal mission. |
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JOHN
ANTLE (PART 1)
Words and Music
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The north
pacific coastline in the days of sail & steam
Was as inhospitable
a place as ever in your dreams
Through hope or desperation came the dauntless
pioneers
Seeking "the good life" in freedom's last frontier
Up the lonely channels to mills and mines they poured
To logging camps and shanties,
all the hardships
to endure
In loneliness and injury they suffered so much pain
'Till came a man of mercy, John Antle was his name
There's providence
that watches over children and fools
There's faith to seize the fallen, and grace to heal their wounds
If ever was a champion on which you could depend
Remember John Antle, he was such a man
| Taking a fourteen foot racing dingy he had
built in his back yard and with his 9 year old son as
crew, Antle sailed north from Vancouver up the Georgia
Straight, through the Discovery passage to Alert Bay,
stopping in at every camp and homestead in what would
become a twenty thousand square mile territory of the
Columbia Coast Mission. |
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