GreyBruceBoomers_Summer2020

y Jodi Jerome
HISTORY
St. Luke’s Church, in what’s now
Point Clark, was built in 1857 at
the mouth of the Pine River.
Russia, which re-opened the Black Sea and Danube
River shipping routes. The 1854 Battle of Alma was one
of that war’s first victories by the allied forces, and was
commemorated in the naming of many rivers and towns.
The town plot of Alma centered around the entrance
of the Pine River into Lake Huron. Its presence and
development as a harbour could aid in the flow of goods
and people into and out of the wilderness that was the
United Counties of Bruce and Huron at the time. Roads
were primitive trails, if they existed at all, and the train
tracks and railroad cars would not arrive for another 15
or 20 years. Alma’s town plot survey was the result of
a government settlement strategy that prioritized water
access for preliminary settlement areas.
Alma did have a mill, a few stores, a warehouse, and the
first post office in Huron Township, named Lurgan — as
well as houses, a church, a graveyard and, nearby, the first
one-room schoolhouse in the Township, S.S. #1. Some of
this development was due to the efforts of two brothers,
John W., a storekeeper and postmaster, and Henry
Cutliffe Gamble, a mill owner and investor. But Alma did
not prosper as expected.
The soil was sandy. The edges
of Lake Huron shifted from
one season to the next, covering
hard-worked fields with sand.
Pine River was too open to the
lake’s moods and too shallow
to accommodate large vessels.
Settlement near the lake shifted
when settlers discovered better
agricultural land located on the
top of the tall ridge that runs
parallel to the lake’s shore.
What did survive was the St.
Luke’s Anglican Church, which
began in 1857 in John Gamble’s
warehouse, close to the mouth
of the Pine River. That year, in
July, the new Anglican Diocese
of Huron was formed. Its
bishop was an Irish minister,
Rev. Benjamin Cronyn, who’d
emigrated in 1832 and proved
himself very capable of handling the large Anglican
congregation of London, in what is now Ontario, and the
surrounding area. He was also a prodigious fundraiser for
church support.
The new Diocese of Huron consisted of 360,000
people in 13 counties, 142 townships and many, many
settlements without any church or religious presence.
Within the 360,000 people in the area, only 70,000 were
known Anglicans. Northwest of London, the only existing
Anglican parish was located in Owen Sound.
That summer, and for many after, Bishop Cronyn rode
through his Diocese, just as he had during his years in
Adelaide Township and areas around London. He
endured the rough trails and forded the streams and river
that were not yet bridged to reach small settlements like
Alma. He helped establish St. Luke’s Anglican Church
the summer he became Bishop.
Jane Yemen recounted the 1857 visit in her scrapbooks
and newspaper columns. “The Bishop from London
came to organize a church. With him were two other
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