Sometime shortly after we moved to Moncton,we began going to church.Church was a much bigger deal on the mid 1960's than it is today and a great deal more people attended.Town was generally shut down on Sunday as well,though the may have been one or two corner stores still open.
The churches at thsat time were the tallest,most imposing buildings in town,even more imposing than City Hall,as I suppose church ought to be.Downtown,at the corner of Queen and Church Streets,there was a church on each corner,and they were made from stone and looked very old.There was something vaguely scary about huge,old buildings like that.
My mother began to attend Mountain View United Church,at the corner of Connaught and McBeth,and from an early time she would take us along.While she would attend worship services in the church sanctuary we would go to Sunday School in the basement.At the time,I remember,my sister was still in the churches nursery in the corner of the basement.While adult family members heard sermons we were taught the same Bible stories by teachers that our mother read to us before bed at home.
Mountain View United Church was very much unlike the other churches around Moncton,at least in appearance.It had neither steeple nor bell,and,in fact did not reach very high into the sky at all,and did not seem to cast much of a shadow.I often wondered if our church didn't have a bell.how my mother ever knew when it was time to go to church.I guess she would have been slightly embarrassed to admit that her reference in such matters was likely the bell from the Catholic Church.
Mountain View United was not built of stones.Instead,it was a 1960's style modern building of glass and brick and wood.I guess,at the time it was a new concept in church building and it fit right in with the surrounding neighborhood,which featured a profusion of expansive brick houses.The Royal Canadian Mounted Police also had a brick building on the same street,and the Moncton Hospital was a bit farther down the road as well.To me,it was a wonder that,after having constructed the surrounding area,there were any bricks left at all.When my mother or a Sunday School teacher would tell the story of the Children Of Israel being forced to make bricks in Egypt,my mind visualized those bricks going to build all those stylish,upper middle class houses all about our church,rather than pyramids.But our church fit right in with the neighborhood.
Often we would drive to church,but sometimes we would walk,in the spring or fall.It was quite some distance to the church,and there really wasn't all that much to see on the way,so the walk bored me.We would walk down to the end of our own street,then down Mountain Road towards downtown.We passed Mapleton School,then Beaverbrook School right next to Mapleton.Mapleton was a French school and it was made of wood and painted white,so as to almost look more like a church than a school.Beaverbrook was made of,you guessed it,brick.We would pass a store where the Green Gables now stands,but there was not a lot along that streach back then.The Shell carwash and the Mc Donalds were not yet built,though the Fairlanes Bowling Alley was there and there was a gas station on the corner of Killiam and Mountain Road.It was called BA.When we walked to church,that is where we crossed Mountain Road,and it never varied.Sometime I would wonder why we could not walk down the other side of Mountain Road,but we never did.
Just before we got to the church we would pass a business in an old house that sharpened knives and skates and the like.There was also a very strange looking house about two blocks before the church.It was a modern style house,a bungalow,but kind of bent in the middle and it had a wrap around balcony around part of it's upper story.I always though of it as being like a boat.It was a very unique house,and,as it turned out,I was later to find out that the people who lived there were Muslim.I always wondered what it would be like to live in that boat house.
What I know of our church,what I've been told as a child,was that it started out as a tent.I always thought it odd that people would go to church in a tent,and I wondered what it would be like.To my mind a tent was a very small place where,even then I could hardly stand up without touching the roofI truly wondered how my sister and my mother and myself,as well as the minister and all the ushers and Sunday School Teachers and the choir and all of the other people would have ever managed to have church in a tent.The first time you jumped up to shout amen or Halleujah,the whole church would be torn apart,and of course,if it happened to be raining everyone would end up getting baptized.As it turned out,the good folks at Mountain View United seemed to have an aversion to much shouting which was likely just as well.I suppose,though,they likely had erected a much larger tent,something like a circus tent perhaps.
I wondered too why our church was called "Mountain View"And I never did discover the answer.I could,I suppose be a reference to jerusalem,in the sense of The New Jerusalem,or perhaps a reference to Calvary.Or,if you looked far off on the horizon,there was what I suppose you could call a mountain,though it was really just a hill.
And so,at roughly the age of four,church became part of my life and I would continue to attend for decade or more until one day I decided that what I really was was an atheist.When I woke up from my athiest inspired sleep decades later,I opened a Bible to a random page and began reading what turned out to be Psalm 121-"I look unto the mountains,where does my help come from?...
The churches at thsat time were the tallest,most imposing buildings in town,even more imposing than City Hall,as I suppose church ought to be.Downtown,at the corner of Queen and Church Streets,there was a church on each corner,and they were made from stone and looked very old.There was something vaguely scary about huge,old buildings like that.
My mother began to attend Mountain View United Church,at the corner of Connaught and McBeth,and from an early time she would take us along.While she would attend worship services in the church sanctuary we would go to Sunday School in the basement.At the time,I remember,my sister was still in the churches nursery in the corner of the basement.While adult family members heard sermons we were taught the same Bible stories by teachers that our mother read to us before bed at home.
Mountain View United Church was very much unlike the other churches around Moncton,at least in appearance.It had neither steeple nor bell,and,in fact did not reach very high into the sky at all,and did not seem to cast much of a shadow.I often wondered if our church didn't have a bell.how my mother ever knew when it was time to go to church.I guess she would have been slightly embarrassed to admit that her reference in such matters was likely the bell from the Catholic Church.
Mountain View United was not built of stones.Instead,it was a 1960's style modern building of glass and brick and wood.I guess,at the time it was a new concept in church building and it fit right in with the surrounding neighborhood,which featured a profusion of expansive brick houses.The Royal Canadian Mounted Police also had a brick building on the same street,and the Moncton Hospital was a bit farther down the road as well.To me,it was a wonder that,after having constructed the surrounding area,there were any bricks left at all.When my mother or a Sunday School teacher would tell the story of the Children Of Israel being forced to make bricks in Egypt,my mind visualized those bricks going to build all those stylish,upper middle class houses all about our church,rather than pyramids.But our church fit right in with the neighborhood.
Often we would drive to church,but sometimes we would walk,in the spring or fall.It was quite some distance to the church,and there really wasn't all that much to see on the way,so the walk bored me.We would walk down to the end of our own street,then down Mountain Road towards downtown.We passed Mapleton School,then Beaverbrook School right next to Mapleton.Mapleton was a French school and it was made of wood and painted white,so as to almost look more like a church than a school.Beaverbrook was made of,you guessed it,brick.We would pass a store where the Green Gables now stands,but there was not a lot along that streach back then.The Shell carwash and the Mc Donalds were not yet built,though the Fairlanes Bowling Alley was there and there was a gas station on the corner of Killiam and Mountain Road.It was called BA.When we walked to church,that is where we crossed Mountain Road,and it never varied.Sometime I would wonder why we could not walk down the other side of Mountain Road,but we never did.
Just before we got to the church we would pass a business in an old house that sharpened knives and skates and the like.There was also a very strange looking house about two blocks before the church.It was a modern style house,a bungalow,but kind of bent in the middle and it had a wrap around balcony around part of it's upper story.I always though of it as being like a boat.It was a very unique house,and,as it turned out,I was later to find out that the people who lived there were Muslim.I always wondered what it would be like to live in that boat house.
What I know of our church,what I've been told as a child,was that it started out as a tent.I always thought it odd that people would go to church in a tent,and I wondered what it would be like.To my mind a tent was a very small place where,even then I could hardly stand up without touching the roofI truly wondered how my sister and my mother and myself,as well as the minister and all the ushers and Sunday School Teachers and the choir and all of the other people would have ever managed to have church in a tent.The first time you jumped up to shout amen or Halleujah,the whole church would be torn apart,and of course,if it happened to be raining everyone would end up getting baptized.As it turned out,the good folks at Mountain View United seemed to have an aversion to much shouting which was likely just as well.I suppose,though,they likely had erected a much larger tent,something like a circus tent perhaps.
I wondered too why our church was called "Mountain View"And I never did discover the answer.I could,I suppose be a reference to jerusalem,in the sense of The New Jerusalem,or perhaps a reference to Calvary.Or,if you looked far off on the horizon,there was what I suppose you could call a mountain,though it was really just a hill.
And so,at roughly the age of four,church became part of my life and I would continue to attend for decade or more until one day I decided that what I really was was an atheist.When I woke up from my athiest inspired sleep decades later,I opened a Bible to a random page and began reading what turned out to be Psalm 121-"I look unto the mountains,where does my help come from?...
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