Before Women Were Sidesmen (And What Happened Next)
Vivian Lewin
In 1971 my then husband (John Geeza) and I moved from Manhattan to Montreal so he could take a one-year job at McGill. Unlike many of our contemporaries, we were churchgoers, and in New York we had found a wide variety of Christian churches. A theatre in the west 40s where communion was shared in a circle on the stage. Fordham University chapel, using liturgies fresh from the renewal that followed Vatican II. The Hungarian Catholic church in our neighbourhood. So when we came to the new city, without benefit of the internet, we started our search for a parish at the Diocesan Book Room on Union Street where we eyeballed the wonderful selection of books, noted lots of writers we knew (Thomas Merton, Charles Williams and CS Lewis) and sidled up to the youngest, longest-haired clerk and asked “where we can find a good mass?”
He suggested we try the 10 a.m. at the Cathedral, and while skeptical…. we had been thinking more along the lines of Loyola chapel, I guess…we were blown away by music the likes of which we had only heard on recordings, the warmth of the community, the accessibility of the liturgy (it was an experimental form called “Kootenay”). We came back, not every Sunday but with some regularity. After two years, John was asked to sit on Select Vestry, and I was invited to join the ladies who washed and ironed the holy linen.
In those days, the sidesmen were indeed men, the young people in the choir were boys, and the servers were all male churchgoers of different ages. We were told about the “old days” when the sidesmen wore morning coats and striped trousers, when the pews were rented by various families, and how modern things now were. (In fact, the parish had eliminated “Anglican Church Women” in favour of including women in other parish activities such as Select Vestry. The Chancel Guild however did not include men!) A few months after the “Support Group for Women in Priesthood” was created…and long before any women were actually ordained… Frances Sheppard and I were invited to become the first two women “greeters.” We took this very seriously. Unlike Archie Malloch, who to the dismay of some presided at the drafty West Door all winter in a thick and fuzzy cardigan, I’d wear a wool dress or tailored suit and fold up my ski underwear beneath, under my nylons. And while I quickly figured out what to wear, it took longer to get used to “doing something” during the liturgy. When were we supposed to pray? How were we to maintain some reverence without being stuffy or pretentious? After a while I relaxed. To be a good host at a church service is reverent! It’s simply a different form of devotion than personal prayer. Helping people find a place, giving them their books, eyeballing the communion line so those heading for the high altar were neither obliged to wait too long, nor hurry forward, keeping my eyes in the direction of the collection plate as I passed it, but not staring, either, at who put what into it… I took pleasure in these small accomplishments and I loved seeing the postures of people as they moved into the church and through the service. Sometimes it seemed and still seems to me that in worship, individuals quite naturally carry many of their past selves with them and an observer can spot these in the carriage of a head or an arm, the spring of a step. To be a greeter is to welcome all these moments and more.
Was it two or three years later that the then Dean asked whether I would care to join a group of women in sewing albs for the servers? Up until then, they had worn cassocks. My mind jumped to what I thought was a logical deduction and my eyes lit up: “Does this mean we are going to have women servers?” The response was sharp. “George Deare [Head Server] is a faithful servant of this Cathedral and I will not have him badgered with talk of this kind!” I walked home over the mountain, working off the heat of that exchange. In due course, and not too long later, one or two women servers did appear. Elsa Cohen was one of the first. Letty James was ordained priest in the Cathedral, in the presence of television cameras and formal protest from some clergy. Our parish was asked to appoint a newly ordained woman priest, Donna Wilson, and I grew in understanding as I heard an older and rather conservative woman behind me turn to her husband at the Vestry meeting and say softly, “If the Bishop asks us to, I guess it’s all right.”
