It’s not easy taking care of a church steeple that stretches 160 feet into the sky over downtown Barrie.
Just ask the folks at Collier Street United Church, where the top of the bell tower reaches about 80 feet above street level, while the steeple pushes twice that height.
“When you look at the skyline, it’s getting surrounded by tall buildings, but it really is the only steeple or religious structure that you see in the downtown core,” Laurie Crosson, a church member since 1968, tells BarrieToday.
Crosson is the co-chair of the Looking Forward campaign, which raising money for various projects at the Collier Street house of worship, not the least of which is the steeple and bell-tower work.
Fundraising continues and the congregation has a five-year goal is to raise about $1 million.
One of the biggest projects for the Collier Street congregation has been the steeple, which is the calling card for any community church.
“It is the big one,” Crosson says. “The value of that (work) is close to $200,000.”
This week, workers toiled away on the bell tower, which houses the decades-old bell.
“They were digging around in there and found old bricks,” she says. “They discovered the last work that was done on the bell tower was probably about 60 years ago, just based on the age of the plywood, because that’s when plywood first started to be used. So that was kind of neat.
“There’s also lots of fertilizer up there from fine, feathered friends,” Crosson added.
This week, workers also refaced the flat portion of the bell tower where the steeple sits to ensure it was weather-tight, as well as replacing the facing around the structure.
The steeple was worked on some three decades ago, so the congregation of about 400 members at Collier Street United Church had to decide if it was something they wanted to spend money on to fix.
“One of the choices in the church was, do we take the steeple down or do we maintain it,” Crosson says. “Because eventually, in 50 or 60 years, it will need to be maintained again, and (we needed to decide) whether we’re passing that along to our next generation.
“So many things are taken down, and I think Collier is the only church in town … with its steeple now, because they’re so difficult to maintain and they’re so high up. I know that the lift that we got was the highest lift you can get without going with an actual crane.”
Workers also measured the steeple ahead of re-shingling, which is expected to begin in the spring, when repairs will also be done to the louvers as well as a fresh coat of paint.
Shingles manufactured from recycled material by a Canadian company will be used to recover the steeple.
“It feels so encouraging,” Crosson says. “We’ve been talking about this for 10 years in our church, because the shingles have been coming down. You can see it just when you look at where the shingles have come down, and that’s a real challenge. It’s not dangerous, but they do fall down and it’s quite a ways.”
As the shingles fall off, that also further exposes the material underneath to the elements, which aren’t so kind in these parts for a few months each year.
“We’ve been so worried about this and which direction we’re going,” she says. “Are we going to make the investment? It’s been a huge project for us.”
HISTORY OF COLLIER STREET UNITED
The oldest portion of Collier Street United Church, located near Poyntz Street, is its sanctuary, built in 1864.
Barrie’s Methodist congregation can trace its roots back to April 1836. Less than three decades later, growth necessitated the construction of a new building with seating for 600 people.
In 1907, another massive project was started with the widening of the sanctuary and an addition.
By 1925, and in concert with the rest of Canada’s Methodists, the Congregational Union and most of the Presbyterian Church of Canada merged into what was known as the Church Union. Since that time, the congregation has been referred to as Collier Street United Church.
Continued growth in the 1970s and ’80s led to more renovations, including demolition of the old Sunday school area to make way for offices, classrooms and meeting spaces located between the 1864 sanctuary and the hall/gymnasium, which was completed in 1986.
