IT’S OUR PARTY AND IT’S TIME TO GET STARTED! It’s been several months in the making, the subject of many hours of meetings, arranging, planning, dreaming; but now we are ready to taste it, touch it, see it, smell it, live it! The Anglican Diocese of Huron kicks off its Sesquicentennial celebrations with a double barreled week of excitement. Around the Diocese, on the first Sunday of Advent (Dec 3) the banners will be unfurled and the prayers will begin in earnest. Every congregation in the Diocese has been given a banner and liturgical methods of enjoying the foretaste of the celebratory banquet to come. Then on Friday, December 8th, as part of Diocesan Executive Council at St. Jude’s in London, our history will come to life. A 33 minute video, entitled “Huron, Our Story” will be debuted. The video, produced by Zach Melnick and Yvonne Drebert of the award winning Pixeldust Studios, will chart our course from the arrival of Benjamin Cronyn in 1832, through the lifetime of the first Synodically elected Bishop in the world. Nick Wells was the Diocesan representative charged with oversight of this project, and did extensive research in period costumes, events, locales and even went so far as to recruit many of the actors involved in the production. He also had a wonderful run in with Lanna. Lanna is the chestnut horse that Nick rides in his role as Ben Cronyn. It wasn’t always a love love relationship. “We trained with her along the trails several times so she would be used to the site. We forgot one thing. On the day of the shoot there were cameras and people and noise. Lanna refused to go past the crew, she bolted, she pawed the ground, she spun on her hind legs. I was not a happy camper” Despite the trials of filming in rugged country and trying to keep straight wardrobe changes over 40 years in time, the end result has Nick fairly aglow. “You’ve got to see this; you’ve got to see how much we’ve grown. It’s like looking at our baby pictures, and remembering. Projecting onto that infant all our hopes and our dreams; only in this case it’s a Diocese not a human infant.” Once debuted at Executive Council, the video is to be distributed to all congregations in the Diocese so that we can all get a sense of our story, a sense of the history that has brought us through 150 years and will carry us into a future filled with excitement and possibilities. Other Sesqui events of note early in the celebration: The Sesquicentennial Cross begins a year long pilgrimage through the Diocese with a stop a Christ Church London, one of the many “Cronyn” churches in the Diocese. Deanery by Deanery the cross will make its way through the vast land we call Huron. Also in view are the three New Year’s Levee on January 1st of 2007. The day will begin with both Bishops at St. Paul’s Cathedral for a Choral Eucharist and Levee (service at 10 and Levee beginning at 11.) Bishop Howe will travel to St. John’s in Cambridge for a 3 pm Levee, while Bishop Bennett will be at St. John’s (Sandwich) Windsor at the same hour. A fourth reception is to be held in Owen Sound in the spring. Everyone in the Diocese is encouraged to consider attending one of these formal beginnings to the calendar year of our 150th anniversary |
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