Apparently the cost was too great and its core values were not enough to keep the church doors open. Its clergy includes Rev. Rae Fletcher, the Rev. Deacon Judy Castle and the Rev. Canon Dr. Doug Leighton.

The congregation began in 1870 as St George's. It changed its name in 1873 to Memorial Church in memory of the first Bishop of Huron, Benjamin Cronyn (1802-1871).In 1955, the parish adopted the name Bishop Cronyn.

PARISH HISTORY

In July 1857 a meeting of the clergy and lay delegates resident within the proposed Diocese was held in London, under the Presidency of Bishop Strachan. Present were 42 clerical members, and 69 lay representatives of the various parishes. The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Cronyn, Rector of St. Paul's Church, London, and the venerable Dr. Bethune, afterwards Bishop of Toronto, were the candidates proposed. Dr. Cronyn was elected on the first ballot, by a narrow majority, and was consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury the same year. This was the first instance of an untrammeled Episcopal election in any part of the English Church for many generations, and the very first election in the Canadian Church.

In 1857, the entire population of the Diocese of Huron was 360,000, 70,000 of whom were members of the Church of England. When Dr. Cronyn was consecrated, there were 43 clergymen in the Diocese, but of these only 40 were in active service. The number of constituted parishes and missions was 46, and there were 59 churches in the whole Diocese.

LONDON CHURCH RETURNS FIRST WORLD WAR TREASURE

A plaque in Bishop Cronyn Church in London, Ontario in memory of Lt-Col Edwin Woodman Leonard, who brought a statue from a damaged church in Belgium during WWI will be returned to Belgium because the London church is closing. The journey of the carving speaks of great battles, a saviour or a thief, and the end of times.

It landed in London 100 years ago, pulled from the ruins of one church and given to another that seemed in this safe land eternal.

Now the London church, not quite eternal, has lost its own war, and the carving is on another journey.

"Since we are closing, it just seemed like the right thing to do is to send it back home," David Bellhouse, a member of Bishop Cronyn Memorial Anglican Church, said Thursday.

The church on William Street looks and smells like history. Ivy covers the walls, and inside, original Victorian stained glass windows sit high above wooden pews polished by decades of parishioners' clothing.

"At the time, it was the pre-eminent Anglican church in London outside of the (St. Paul) cathedral," Archdeacon Allan Livingstone said.

Now the church barely draws 25, a victim of changing times and declining interest in mainstream religion in Canada and the clear lack of an intentional gospel to proclaim.

Struggling for financial survival, the church will hold its last Sunday service in December, although it will try to rent out space for community groups and recitals.

ST. GEORGE'S TO BE DEMOLISHED

An application for a demolition permit has been made for the St. George's Anglican Church in the Walkerville area of Windsor, Ontario. The Anglican diocese will put the historic St. George's Church up for sale in a last-ditch effort to save it.

But officials at the Anglican Church's Diocese of Huron -- which owns the Walkerville property, with an asking price of $250,000 -- aren't holding their breath.

"We're going to proceed with demolition but because the city really would like to see if we can sell it first, we're going to test it on the market for a couple of months," Paul Rathbone, secretary-treasurer for the Diocese of Huron, said Wednesday. "But we're not going to hold it on the market long at all.

"I think the city will see there's no demand for these buildings. One is condemned by an engineer."

Rathbone said the "For Sale" sign will go up in the next few days. But he noted that city council provided the names of some interested parties already, though nothing worked out.

"It wasn't our intention to sell it, but some citizens stood up at city council, arguing against demolition," Rathbone said. "So our construction representative had some people through but none of them were interested in it because it's in such bad shape."

The older, plainer building was designed by Donald Smith and built in 1921 as the Memorial Hall of St. Mary's (Anglican) Church. The St. George's parish moved in 1925 to the red-brick building with the front-gabled roof. In 1955, a larger modern church was constructed on the property, featuring a west-end bell tower and floor-to-ceiling windows segmented by thin concrete columns.

If demolished, Rathbone said the property at 1949 Devonshire Cres., on the southeast corner of Kildare Road -- which has been empty since the summer -- would accommodate three residential lots.

"If someone from out of town looked at the property, they'd be more inclined to invest in it because they're used to spending a lot on buildings and then putting more into them," Weeks said. "And at $250,000, it's pretty much a steal."

A noted local observer wrote this, "The church went liberal and the last priest was ultra-liberal. The church was down to less than 35 parishioners. The sexual agenda driving the Anglican Church of Canada will see even more people leave if gay marriage rites are passed. As far as Bishop Cronyn is concerned at the end there were no children, no Sunday School, practically nothing at the church. What was amazing was that former Dean and Bishop of Huron Bruce Howe attended this church every week so he must have seen what was going on, but once again nothing was done."

Orthodox Canadian Anglican Blogger David of Samizdat said the Diocese of Huron is demolishing St. George's in Windsor because the congregation has withered and the diocese doesn't need the building. "Of course, when St. Aidan's congregation -- also in Windsor -- joined the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), the diocese took them to court because they really needed the property.

The modernist St. Barnabas Church, Windsor in the Diocese of Huron avoided the wrecking ball when the city's heritage committee voted to deny the Anglican Diocese's application to demolish the main church, at 2115 Chilver Road, which was built in 1955. Instead, the committee wants the city to designate the structure a heritage building -- which would prevent demolition in the future.

The committee, however, gave approval to demolish the other two buildings on the property, a smaller 1939 church, and a neighbouring residence.

The stated intent of the demolition was to make way for construction of a drugstore.

There is nothing particularly surprising about that, since it follows the received ACoC survival strategy of Deconsecrate, Demolish and Trade (DDT), writes Samizdat.

"What makes this a little different is what happened to the congregation. The church's congregation relocated and merged with the congregation of St. Aidan's last year, forming the new congregation of St. Augustine of Canterbury at 5145 Wyandotte St. East.

"The building situated at 5145 Wyandotte St. East used to belong to St. Aidan's congregation, a congregation that voted to join ANiC in 2008. The congregation was sued by the diocese of Huron for possession of the building; the diocese won and promptly locked the congregation out of the building. 165 people left and about 12 remained, so to claim that St. Barnabas and St. Aidan's "merged" is misleading: the diocesan version of St. Aidan's was taken over -- replaced -- with the congregation of St. Barnabas, leaving St. Barnabas empty.

"Why would the diocese do this? For the diocese to maintain the fiction that it needed St. Aidan's building, it could not sell it shortly after winning a thoroughly nasty court battle. Instead, the diocese moved another congregation into St. Aidan's and sold the building that belonged to the moved congregation."

This is what, in church parlance, is called being missional; or is it incarnational -- I forget.

Other ACoC dioceses are also in trouble. The Diocese of Quebec is on the brink of closing. Without radical change, the diocese could soon be extinct. The Diocese of Niagara recently closed both St. Matthias and St. David and St. Patrick in Guelph, Ontario. This diocese also faces an uncertain future.

If the 2016 General Synod acts on a motion to change the church's law so that clergy can marry same-sex couples then what happened to TEC when she consecrated Bishop Gene Robinson could happen to the ACoC with massive departures to the ANiC and to Rome. For the ACoC which had only 266,777 ASA in 2007 (in 2015 knowledgeable sources it is less than 100,000), that would be an unrecoverable disaster of the first order. The future of the ACofC looks even bleaker than the American Episcopal Church.

END