Mar
31
By Jack Krayenhoff
Cridge Centre for the Family, Cridge Club, Cridge Park - most of us have heard of those.
But there is also a Mt. Cridge, west of Knight Inlet, a Cridge Passage and a Cridge island (south of Prince Rupert). This Cridge must have been an important guy! Who was he?
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| Image A-01208 courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives |
Edward Cridge goes back quite some time. He was born in Devonshire, England, in 1817 -that's just two years after the battle of Waterloo, and Napoleon was still very much alive, though put safely away in St. Helena, an island in the Atlantic.
As a young man Cridge was athletic, and a good horseman. He was also a gifted cello player, and kept up that skill all his life. In fact, before the latest renovations of the Royal Jubilee Hospital, of which he was the initiator, a photograph of him playing the cello hung on the wall of the main floor, close to the entrance, where the central four elevators were located. Do you remember seeing it? During his studies at Cambridge, where he got his theology degree in 1848, he also shone in mathematics.
With all these civilized qualifications, he was set for a successful career in the Church of England. So what happened to make him opt instead for a job as chaplain in a very remote fort of the Hudson Bay Company, necessitating a long and by no means safe voyage around the Horn?
Something happened, which not only caused this dramatic move, but also continued to shape his entire life in Victoria. In England the so-called Oxford movement in the Anglican Church was pushing strongly for a strengthening of liturgy and ritualism that moved it in the direction of Roman Catholic practice. This wing of the Church became known as High Anglican. The Protestant-leaning wing of the Church, the Low Church, to which Cridge belonged, strongly opposed this.
When Cridge became Vicar of Christ Church in Westham, Essex, this conflict became an increasing source of stress in his own congregation, and eventually it became so bad that the Bishop took Cridge aside, and suggested that he should apply for the job of Chaplain for the HBC Fort Victoria. Cridge took the hint, applied and got the job. Beside his salary and a parsonage he was promised 100 acres of land for cultivation. Meanwhile he had gotten to know Mary Winmill, who was willing to join him in the adventure, and they boarded the ship as a married couple. They were joined by three servants who had been working for Mary's widowed mother, while Cridge's sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, would come over a little later as teachers in the church school that Cridge knew he would be responsible for. When they left, Cridge was 37, Mary ten years younger. They arrived in Fort Victoria in April 1855 and were warmly welcomed by Fort Victoria's chief, James Douglas. It was the beginning of a solid and lasting friendship between the two men.
Cridge's parish extended west to Sooke and north to include Saanich Peninsula, and he often traveled along very bad roads, by foot or on horseback, in the winter often through deep mud. Nanaimo was also his responsibility, accessible only by boat. In 1859 it got its own pastor. In Victoria, a church was soon under construction on Church Hill, named Christ Church after his church in Westham, but well before that, Mary had started a church school in the parsonage on Humboldt Street. It was taken over by Cridge's sisters when they arrived not much later.
He soon involved himself in civic affairs as well. Already in 1856 he was asked by the newly established legislature to supervise public education for which, however, no funds were forthcoming for several years. In 1859 he set up a chapter of the YMCA, felt to be necessary because "in an unsettled frontier town there was much to tempt young men."
As a result of the Frazer River gold rush, the population of Victoria suddenly increased dramatically, and when the Cridges one morning in 1858 found a sick man lying in their garden, Mary did take him into the parsonage to nurse him back to health, but the Cridges realized a hospital was urgently needed. Cridge and Dr. Helmcken organized and staffed a cottage on the corner of Yates and Broad Streets, where sick and injured people could find care. One notable patient there had played the pipes at the Battle of Waterloo! As it grew and had to be replaced by bigger facilities, it eventually developed into the Royal Jubilee Hospital, at its present location, which was named after Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887.
Another important initiative of the Cridges took was the setting up of an orphanage. Around 1872 increasing numbers of homeless children appeared on the streets, partly orphaned because their parents had died during the smallpox epidemic and later, by an outbreak of so-called black measles. (This disease was evidently characterized by a hemorrhagic rash, a severe variety of red measles.) Another source of orphanhood were miners who had procreated in Victoria and moved on to the gold fields without taking responsibility for the results of their actions. Like the Jubilee Hospital, the orphanage started in a cottage and culminated in the Protestant Orphanage on Hillside and Cook Streets. The property was purchased through a large sum bequeathed by a wealthy gold miner who was apparently aware of where many of these orphans had come from. The orphanage is now known as the Cridge Centre for the Family, welcoming families in crisis, single parents, and now also needy recent immigrants, and seniors.
Cridge was also an enthusiastic musician, and by forming a group of musicians playing together that kept going after his death, he could be said to be the originator of the Victoria Symphony.
No question about it: Cridge was not only a devoted Christian but also an exponent of what is now called the Social Gospel. Several of Victoria's good and valuable institutions were started by him and his wife.
But do not think his life was an uninterrupted success story. When Victoria's population suddenly grew, Cridge wrote home to England to ask for more clergy to meet its spiritual needs. His plea was heard by a wealthy lady who decided that this colony needed even more than that: its own bishop plus two archdeacons for its own diocese. So in 1859 a letter arrived in Victoria announcing that its bishop was going to be George Hills, hitherto vicar of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and only a year older than Cridge. To get to Victoria he crossed Panama by the recently constructed railroad and arrived in Victoria in January 1860. He and Cridge had friendly relations at first, and he appointed Cridge as Dean of Christ Church, thus leaving him in charge of his old congregation.
However, Hills was very much a High Church man, and this necessarily lead to controversy with Cridge, whose Low Church views were as strong as ever. In 1869 Christ Church was destroyed by fire, and when three years later a new Christ Church was finished in its place, it was time to consecrate it as a cathedral. All went well during the morning service, but in the evening, the preacher, the Archdeacon from the mainland, stated that the Anglican Church would die unless it adopted the High Church rites. It was more than Cridge could bear hearing in the cathedral, which was still his own church, after all. He stepped forward, and with a voice trembling with anger, cried, "I rise to protest against these views." After a shocked silence, the congregation began to clap and stamp its feet for several minutes. Then the service was quickly brought to a close.
It was a colossal insult to Bishop Hills, and he demanded an apology from Cridge. A prolonged correspondence between the two men followed in an effort to resolve the problem somehow, but it led to nothing. The whole drama was published in detail in the Colonist, which in this matter supported Cridge, and it was followed with avid interest by the whole city. An ecclesiastical court condemned Cridge, but he continued to preach in the cathedral, enjoying wide support by his congregation. In the end, Hills put the matter before the secular court, where Judge Begbie (the "hanging judge") found in favour of Hills and granted an injunction to remove Cridge from the cathedral. (Privately Begbie sympathized with Cridge, and sent him a check for $1200 to cover the cost of the trial!)
To continue church services, Cridge rented a hall on Pandora Ave, taking with him most of the congregation, including Sir James Douglas, Dr. Helmcken, Senator William MacDonald and many more prominent Victorians. The first Sunday after he left, the clergyman who took his place in Christ Church Cathedral preached to 12 members, and a few strangers.
Cridge then linked up with a denomination in the US, that had left the Episcopal (Anglican) Church for similar reasons, and called itself the Reformed Episcopal Church. James Douglas donated two building lots on Humboldt Street to build a new church, which was completed in 1876, at a total cost of $12,000. It was given the name of Church of Our Lord. Its style is known as 'Carpenter Gothic,' because wood is the building material. It is the oldest church building in the same location in Victoria (St. Paul's in Esquimalt is a little older, but it was moved), and has been declared a National Heritage Site. The first three or four pews on both sides of the aisle were reserved for the Douglas family, the Carrs (Emily Carr sat there when she was a girl), the MacDonalds and several other prominent Victoria families. Those pews still carry these names on little metal signs on the back, and can be easily seen today.
At the opening service, 600 people packed the sanctuary, and under Cridge's leadership it continued its service to the community. Today this heritage is continued in the Cridge Club, an opportunity for seniors to get together every Thursday noon for a hot meal, a cheery sing-song and a speaker on historical, medical or one of many other subjects. People appreciate the cordial welcome and happy atmosphere, and many have made friends there. Another outreach is The Living Edge, which operates at the Quadra Village Community Centre, where some 300 needy people are served an excellent dinner (like roast beef) every Sunday evening. In addition it runs a food bank twice a week that serves about 130 needy families, and also 40 recent immigrant families who live in low-cost housing at the Cridge Centre for the Family. That is hard work for 40 volunteer church members!
But back to Cridge - now Bishop Cridge. The great adventures of his life were now past, and he lived the life of a much-loved pastor of his church and respected citizen of our city. It was he who conducted the funeral service and internment in Ross Bay Cemetery of Sir James Douglas in 1877, and it was he who gave the opening prayer when the new Parliament buildings were opened in 1898.
He also built a spacious house in James Bay which he called Marifield, and today's Marifield Avenue was the driveway to that house. His property was across the street from the Carrs, and the children of both families (including Emily Carr, of course) often played together. However, disaster struck the Cridges the year the Black Measles epidemic hit the city. Four of their six children succumbed. Three of the Carr children also were taken.
Cridge resigned as Rector of the Church of Our Lord in 1892. He died at the grand old age of 95, in 1913, and was buried in Ross Bay cemetery, beside his dearly beloved wife and partner Mary, whom he had buried eight years earlier.
Many details of Cridge's life in this article were taken from the book "Quiet Reformers," by Ian Macdonald and Betty O'Keefe, published in 2010.