For years these churches have been important places of faith and fellowship within their communities and we believe in the value of preserving this part of our history. We hope you find these lists useful and informative!
Churches of Medicine Hat and District
Written and researched by Clarence Janke
Prologue
It is my purpose for this Web-Page to list first the present day Churches which are mainly in the City of Medicine Hat but as well any in other Towns and Villages of this Area. This listing will include the Name of the Church, the Denomination of the Church, the Address of the Church as well as the Telephone Numbers of these Churches if they are available. Will also list the City, Town, Village in which the specific Church is located. I am mostly depending on the Telephone Directories of the area to give me this information. There are some that I must list with a Question Mark ie.(????), as I am not sure what Denomination they may fall into so have listed them thus. I realize they are Protestant but some go beyond my understandings of denominations.
For the Churches of Medicine Hat as well as of Redcliff of the Earlier Days for which I am doing a Listing, I am relying on the Records of the Hendersons Directories plus several other Early City Directories to help me with this. In this Listing I have researched the pages of these Directories for the Years beginning in 1890 (my first available issue) and at approximate ten year intervals until 1990, I believe this gives an accurate Summation and should miss very few. There will be name changes and address changes as can be expected but the overall compilation should be quite complete. For this Listing, I include only the Name of the Church as well as the original Street Address (some very early Directories listed no addresses so I have marked these (????) and where available, more recent Street Addresses).
A bit of clarification should be given here regarding early Street addresses in Medicine Hat. Present Day Medicine Hat is divided as SE, NE, SW, NW. The North- South Separation is the South Saskatchewan River, the East-West separation is Division Avenue which runs North & South a few blocks west of Downtown. What we refer to now as Downtown Medicine Hat is as it was a hundred plus years ago, an area of about three blocks squared on the west side of the Canadian Pacific Railway line and lying to the South of the South Saskatchewan River. In early day listings you generally see only the Street Address with no Directional designation, the majority though not all will be on the south side of the river. The north side of the river was less settled until later years and though there were a few business along Riverside North (an area of some approx. three blocks wide on the north side of the river.), also schools and churches. These were scant in comparison to the south side which covered both sides of the Railway tracks as well as what is still known as the Flats area with residences and also with smaller corner stores, as well as quite a number of industries which I do not wish to elaborate on further here. There were some Early Day street addresses that were changed which I would clarify here;
- 1st St.SE was known as the Esplanade
- 2nd St.SE was known as Main Street
- 3rd St.SE was known as Toronto Street
- 4th St.SE was known as Montreal Street
A number of History Books have been written on individual Churches of the Early Days, I will list these Books at the conclusion of that Section so that anyone further interested in a Specific Church of Days Gone By may follow up on it. For the Churches of the Rural Areas of these Earlier Days, I am relying on the History Books of each area to help me with this.
