St. John’s Minster Anglican Parish

St. John’s has been renowned over the years for its robust music program and choirs and for its hearty community involvement. For years the stage in our hall was the public entertainment venue and the hall itself was used for public events, farmers’ markets, and social gatherings. Even today, after many years of operation, it continues as the twice weekly venue for a noon hour Soup Kitchen. We have also hosted an emergency winter drop-in centre during Covid, several AA groups, a community youth group, and numerous other events. Being the original church in the city, we have been chosen as the venue for special community services such as the Memorial Service for our late Queen Elizabeth II and for the victims of the Humboldt bus crash and the Newfoundland offshore drilling rig tragedy.

This parish, located in the far west of the diocese, is strategically situated right on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan. It encompasses the remnant of a very large rural parish of what was originally the Barr Colony. Covering some sixteen townships, it originally included some 15-30 country and small-town churches with St. John’s as the central or mother church. Of these, only a few are still functioning on a regular basis. The original church, one fashioned of logs brought in by the First Nations people of Onion Lake, was opened for worship in July 1904. However, it was soon bursting at the seams, and a new church was planned to replace it. The new building, built of brick in the New Gothic style, was opened in 1910 and still stand proudly in the city centre to this very day.
The Barr Colony was envisioned by its founders, the Revs. Isaac Barr and George Exton Lloyd, as being a little outpost of English and Anglican culture out here in the Prairies, but since then has welcomed a host of other nationalities and religious groups. Today Lloydminster has a healthy population of peoples from all over the world; St. John’s itself has many people from Atlantic Canada—chiefly Newfoundland—and from Nigeria and the Philippines, as well as many First Nations people. We rent space every Sunday to two Philippino Pentecostal congregations and in the past have also had a Roman Catholic group from south India using our sanctuary.