This church was built two years before Confederation of Canada (1865). The original denomination was "Auld Kirk" (Church of Scotland) and the architecture reflects it. This was a very conservative form of Presbyterianism. The church lacked any ornamentation. However, this was more than compensated for in the clean lines of the structure, and the large rectangular windows. There was a simplistic beauty within the church where lines of pews converged to form beautifully proportioned rectangles. Everything was made to convey your eye forward to the pulpit. The interior structure is an acoustical dream! Today, the church is owned by the United Church of Canada. Although it no longer has regular service, it is still well used for special services, weddings and funerals and is also a popular concert hall. This project began with the sound of squealing tires. I was busy at the time, test launching a boat in Owen Sound Harbor. A car slammed on its brakes and a man jumped out. He asked me excitedly where I had come from. I was preoccupied and impatiently motioned to the industrial building behind me. A few days later, Mr. Cameron Graham showed up at my shop door. He explained that he was a member of the Manotick Antique Boat Club and the proud owner of a large wooden yacht that was used in the Dunkirk evacutation. After this conversation, Cam explained he had moved back to Leith for the purpose of taking charge of the restoration of the Leith Church. At that point, he asked if I would be interested in contracting the interior restoration. I told him that yes, I would consider it. I had time to think about it, since the committee was still actively fund raising. Over the coarse of the next couple of years Cam was a frequent visitor to my shop. The day came when he asked if I would submit a quote. The job was to restore the entire interior of this church. I asked who I was bidding against. He replied there was only one other contractor, Tim Singbeil. I didn't know Tim personally, but was aware of his work. We shared many of the same clients. Tim did to buildings what I did to boats. He is very much a Historical Carpenter having served his apprenticeship working on the historical homes near Uxbridge, Ontario. He was very knowledgeable about pre-confederation carpentry and Pioneer style. One of my clients had hired him to build a pair of beautiful French doors. I admired and respected the craftsmanship. Consequently, when Cam told me who I was bidding against, I replied, "I won't bid against him. I will work with him, if he is willing".That was the beginning of a good friendship between Tim and I. The church itself became our shop. We made a deal..... it wasn't a church again till we were done. So it was okay to curse and swear like a carpenter when the time was appropriate. We removed all the pews and took them to my shop. I was all for repairing them there and then spraying them down. Tim smiled and said,"No, we have to make these look like they were touched by the hand of man". Through Tim, I learned respect for the history of each piece, and began to think less the concept of making things "better than new". Even the squeak when you sit in a pew is important. It speaks of age. These same lessons have carried into my boat building. I am more conscious of the "patina" of age within a boat. In return for these lessons, I taught Tim some of the skills of a boat builder. Boatbuilders work upside down, and rarely is there a straight line. I also taught him lessons in lamination and the use of epoxy. We refinished the floors and then began returning the pews. Each pew was rebuilt within the church. It was painted and then put back into its original location. Removing the "staging" at the front of the church revealed the original pencil outlines scribed into the floor of the original pulpit built in the 1860's. It was an odd feeling to see the handiwork and thoughts of a carpenter from so long ago. The original pulpit had been removed sometime in the 1890's and never replaced. The question arose: do we build it? That had to wait for another time and more fund raising. Sometime in the 1940's, the church had moved a partition wall forward to create Sunday School Rooms. We were asked to replace the wall to its original position and remove the Sunday School Rooms. Consequently, we had to recreate new pews to replace those that were missing. A person would be hard pressed to find our copies! An interesting feature of this church are the doors on the pews. This apparently was a unique feature of the Scottish Churches. It made our task of fitting pews more difficult. The pews had to be spaced perfectly. We also had to build a few doors to replace those that were missing. The last task was replacing much of the wainscoting on the walls. The church was built "triple bricked", but moisture played havoc and had rotted out sections of wainscoting over the years. I was asked privately to repair some of the exterior doors. I rebuilt the "coffin door" at the back of the church as well as the two front doors. I managed to save much of the original wood, replacing only the rotten or damaged pieces. I was also commissioned to build a large cupboard at the back of the church to store hymnals, brooms etc. I was asked to build it from the salvaged pine that we tore up from the staging at the front of the church. I matched the moldings and "look" so that this piece fits right in. If you didn't know it, you might think it had been there since 1865! The following winter we were asked to recreate the pulpit. Tim and I used many of my boat building techniques to build this pulpit and then move it to the church. Though Tim's expertise in design, a few clues in old "paint lines" found on pews and walls, we recreated something that would fit appropriately within this church. The last lesson Tim taught me is that buildings evolve with their use. Many things had changed within this church over the last 150 years. Some things we could remove and put back as "original". Some traces of the recent and distant past had to be left. An example of this was that we didn't replace the original "precentors box", because back around 1910 one of the congregation had built and hand carved a lectern. It is a beautiful piece and is certainly part of that building's history, and very much cherished by the local community. This project was a welcome break from the boats I normally work on. Over the coarse of two winters I made many friends and acquaintances within the little community of Leith. I still cherish those memories, and it is a project I am very proud of .
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