Trinity Church getting 'molished now

   Trinity Church, on St. Denis and Viger since 1865 gets the wreckers ball this week, as I revealed in a front page Gazette story. Several lovely old adjacent grey stones are also goin' down.
   I had a few other details that had to be sacrificed for purposes of fitting it on the paper, including this quote from Serge Durflinger.

  The Trinity Church was established as a garrison church at a time when thousands of British soldiers were stationed in Montreal to defend Canada during the American Civil War," says University of Ottawa military Historian Serge Durflinger. "The steeple is brilliant and was a landmark in what was considered a nice, prominent location. It might have been a bit ostentatious but it was considered befitting of British military aristocracy. Many officers would be married, buried or have their kids christened at the church, so it was a fixture.

And this:

When its initial spiritual leader Reverend Canon Bancroft died in 1876 at a mere 57 years of age, church insiders blamed chronic church money woes for his demise.

      It was believed that the anxiety and toil of body and mind in trying to free the building from debt brought on the impairment of the doctor’s health, which eventually resulted in his death

   It survived a repossession scare from the Trust and Loan Company and in 1909 the Last Post Fund was founded within the Trinity Church by a group led by Boer War-veteran Arthur Hair, a member of Rector John McPherson’s congregation. The Last Post Fund has since spread through Canada and has paid for the funerals of over 150,000 Canadian war veterans.
   Also: the stained glass windows were by Guido Nincheri and worth something like $100,000 each by one estimate. They were supposed to be given to a Korean Church which wasn't able to pay to move them so they just stayed there and ended up getting smashed up. Various schemes had come and gone to use the facility for a nightclub, steak house and art gallery but the hospital insisted that it needed the land for its project.
Here are some historical references: 1,2,3,4,5.