My kind friend and also former GPKer, SueLP, kindlysurprised me with this photo of St. Mark's Anglican
Church in 2005. To the right you can see just a bit
of the Parish Hall. As St. Mark's Sexton through my
high school years, I was responsible for all janitor
duties plus, as much as possible between school,
to attend weddings and funerals to help "Canon B".
------------------------------------------------------
Of God and the Devil:
Two Anglican Priests
~ by Michael T. RilstoneTwo Anglican Priests
My teen years and beyond were spent in the small town of Greenfield Park, Quebec, home of St Paul’s Anglican Church.
Our family had moved there from another neighbouring Montreal suburb, Longueuil, just as I hit my teen years. Of my two childhood homes, Greenfield Park is the one that streams through my veins the strongest, evoking the greatest memories of growing up.
A few years go, my “Parker” loyalty being so strong, I established a web site to re-unite hundreds who had moved away and lost touch, due primarily to the Quebec Exodus. I’ll come back to that.
There was one anomaly when my Family became “Parkers”. We were Anglican and Mom insisted we remain faithful to St Mark’s in Longueuil. Mom remained fiercely loyal both to St. Mark’s and to its decades-long resident Rector, Canon Bonathan, who performed at least one Sacrament to five generations of our family before finally retiring!
Mom’s loyalty probably saved my childhood innocence.
I was an Altar Boy, Choir Boy, Sunday School Teacher, (for the one year my voice tumbled from soprano to baritone), Founder and President of a renewed chapter of the St. Mark’s Anglican Young Peoples’ Association and Church Sexton from age 15 until age 18, at which time my studies at McGill University and apprentice accounting and auditing work finally forced me to drop that time-consuming, part time position at Church.
During my teenage years there were many weeks I was at the church every day, sometimes from dawn, when my janitorial duties commenced, to midnight, when I locked the parish hall after a teen dance.
Mom brought me up to be both very parochial and spiritual. These were the sixties in a religious based family: until I started dating at nineteen, I had little clue of the real world women-wise. Sometimes I wonder if my first girlfriend had been amazed about what little clue I had with “you know”, but never said a word or held that against me.
How close was I to Canon Bonathan, our trusted priest? Did Mom ever have qualms about my being in his presence alone so much? Of course not! Canon B was the Priest, a Man of God, the essence of virtue and good in all things.
Until my eighteenth year when I gave up my Sexton duties, I was probably in or near Canon B’s company more than anyone else on this planet outside of my immediate family. In fact, a father of two girls, I sometimes felt he looked at me as the son he never had, and maybe longed for.
Canon B occasionally attended the interscholastic games I played in with my Greenfield Park Royal George High School teams when we ventured to Longueuil and the archrival Lemoyne D’Iberville High School squads. Sporting his clerical collar, I clearly remember the time my teammates remarked that the competition needed a priest. They were amazed when I enlightened them that he was there in fact for me, joking that it put God on our side.
We were so close that when I was thirteen, Canon B took me to Maine, USA for a vacation. On a regular basis I accompanied him to St. Margaret’s, an old age home in Montreal, to serve, handing him the communion host and wine for the elderly, bedridden seniors.
Since he and his wife were advancing in years, I took time out of my regular janitor duties at the Church every Saturday and went across the lawn to the Rectory to wash their kitchen floor, plus other small jobs too difficult for them to maintain. For this he always slipped me a two dollar bill which found its way the next day onto the collection plate.
Everything Canon Bonathan said was gospel. I was 12, 13, 14 and on, trying to figure out life. I was at his mercy, no matter what. I did whatever he asked me to do, no questions asked. He was the Voice of God on Earth. He was Authority. He could have done ANYTHING he wanted to do with me. That was the power he held. Thankfully, he was a respectable and moral man!
So here I was for years living two lives, school and play in Greenfield Park and a separate and very active church life six miles away in Longueuil.
Many of my classmates were also practicing Anglicans, but when they were walking down Empire Street to help at their church to run off the weekly bulletins, or whatever, all in the company of their Father Bockus, I would continue to the corner of Churchill Boulevard, grab the #1 bus, and head further on to Longueuil and the most solid and safest of comforts in my life, my Church.
Almost fifty years later I was shocked to my very core to learn that Mom’s decision to remain loyal to St. Mark’s may have saved my emotional life. In fact, being the highly emotional person I am, it may have saved my life, period.
Now we fast forward into a new century, into my fifties, and loving computers as a hobby, especially their phenomenal power of connecting people worldwide. I decided to start up an eclectic blog web site knowing that through word of mouth and engine searches, “Parkers” scattered worldwide would eventually reconnect. In fact, two I did re-connect are now engaged! How’s that for the power of the Web!
Through this Greenfield Park blog site, one personal reconnection with an old acquaintance from my high school days was extremely troubling. We exchanged many E-mails on our life in Greenfield Park and our Anglican spiritual upbringing. After relaying my busy and safe life at St. Mark’s, a disturbing E-mail reply stated, “I have a bag of marshmallows ready for the day St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Greenfield Park burns to the ground.”
On that fateful day almost three years ago, a deep, dark secret that had been totally “swept under the rug” in our little town for almost five decades reared its ugly head, blasting out onto my computer screen in an E-mail that haunted me to the bone.
Asking why anyone would be exhilarated at seeing St. Paul’s burn to its foundation was met with, “Reverend Bockus sexually molested me. He was molesting many of our young parishioners”.
For personal reasons and depending on your viewpoint, I was our planet’s best or worst person to spill this devastating life long secret to. I was devastated to learn that while I was growing up under the spiritual guidance of a wonderful and moral priest, almost half a century earlier my schoolmates were being molested daily by a priest their parents trusted, sending most of them into a lifelong, downward spiral of guilt and shame.
On that day I made a vow to commence a crusade to bring healing, peace and grace to every Victim I could find, starting with the Parish of St. Paul’s, then on to every parish Bockus “ministered” in, and then beyond to only God knows how far. Sometimes we must leave the end of our projects in His hands. We have to trust He will show the way and guide us in our work.
One must be wary with such incredible and damning information until such time as the Truth can be established, either through a court conviction or confession.
Bockus died in February, 1998 in New Brunswick, so both a confession and a court date were impossible. However, a third possibility finally arose when the Anglican Church admitted Bockus’ activities and offered pastoral counseling to all his victims.
NOW we can get to work! We have a mission to find all of Bockus’ victims and offer help to those who wish it, confidentially and discreetly.
Praise the Internet! Appreciating the power of locating people via the Greenfield Park site, another has been established to find and help Bockus’ victims.
As stated, Bockus “ministered” in eight Canadian parishes, so it is suspected that there are many victims across Canada, perhaps further. The site’s home page is found at www.GPKVictims.blogspot.com
This web site has Victim Impact and Healing Statements, Letters of Support, and discussion, pro and con. There are those who believe nothing should be done, for various reasons.
The site contains contact information for Bockus Victims in search of professional counseling.
For the St. Paul’s Parish, the site also has a poll to remove a street sign in Greenfield Park honouring Bockus.
This world is filled with mostly good Priests, with wonderful intentions, like Canon Bonathan. Sadly, there are a few with horrible sexual intentions like Bockus, which destroys lives, and often, their whole family.
I have seen both and I believe two main things must be acknowledged and done.
We must not hold the deeds of the bad Priests against the many good Ones. In fact, the good Ones are there waiting to help, ready to provide pastoral healing to the Victims.
We must ALL work hard to amend the legacies of the bad priests, whether they are dead or alive, for the horror of the loss of childhood innocence lies deep in the emotions of their Victims to this day. These were our friends, neighbours and classmates. Regardless of our spiritual beliefs, it is our moral duty to help them.
If you know of any child who may have come into contact with Bockus from 1940 to 1979, the years he ministered in eight parishes, please direct them to the web site. In fact, if you know of anyone who has ever been sexually molested and living with the shame and guilt, it is time for recovery! Is that person you? If so, please read the site, see that you are NOT the guilty one, nor should you be ashamed, and get professional guidance. IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT!
MTR
