Poplar Park is a locality northeast of Selkirk. Its suggested original name was Dehova-Dubivci. Then Poplar Point.
The first settlers arrived in the late 1800s to an area known as Oak Point west of the current location of St. James Church.
The parish of St. James, Poplar Park, was originally a mission of St. Philip, Scanterbury, but the settlers wanted their own church.
In 1905 Charlie Mattson donated land for a church and cemetery. A sum of $101.00 was received from the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge in England. Some of the settlers belonged to the SPCK at home.
The church and cemetery were consecrated by the Right Rev. Samuel Pritchard Matheson, Archbishop of Rupertsland, on March 13, 1910.
At the time the Rev. Louis Le Clair was in charge of the parish of St. Philip in Scanterbury. The first minister there had been the Rev. R. E. Coates.
The signatories to the petition to consecrate the church and cemetery were Chas. Monkman, Philip Monkman, William Folster, George Boulton, Patrick Bruce, John Leask, and John Isbister. So they can be reognised as the founders of the parish.
The church was built with local labour. The logs for the walls were laid on stone foundations. The boarded roof was covered with shingles. The walls were clad on the inside with tin sheets which were scored into sections, each section imprinted with a design of a church.
The chimney was built by George Longbottom. The pews, lectern, pulpit and altar were hand crafted by Patrick Bruce. The Bolen family donated kerosene lamps for the wall and two large ornate ceiling lamps.
In the 1920s the church went into a decline as congregants moved away. However, during the 1930s Depression people returned. There was a Sunday School and a Ladies Group.
Church membership declined again in the 1940s and 1950s.
Nevertheless, renovations were organised in the 1950s by S. E. Woodward and Jim Boulton, the bellringer. A new floor was installed, the exterior was painted, the war memorial received a new base. The church was rededicated by Archbishop L. R. Sherman on August 2, 1950. Electrical service was installed in 1952 but the church continued to be heated with a big box stove.
Beginning in 1947 St. James Church was visited by the Sunday School Caravan Mission. Services were monthly and conducted by Church Army Captains, firstly by W. A. Knight, and later by G. Hardy. Holy Communion was conducted by Canon Dawson and Archdeacon Holmes.
A clergyman from Selkirk (Rev. Paul Smith, Archdeacon Hoad) or Winnipeg (Rev. Tim Appleton, Rev. Robin Mather) has attended the long established annual service on the second Sunday of June each year.
Photographed in 2007.
Published in Senior Scope, June 9, 2021.
Some information provided by Ed Gottwald.