George Shilliam Fox

Windows to the Soul:

Vancouver's stained-glass windows reflect our changing society, and cast a unique historic glow on the people who helped create them

Reprinted from the Vancouver Sun, December 24, 2001, with permission
By Douglas Todd

The story of the grandfather I never met and the history of stained glass in Greater Vancouver churches are intertwined.

Tracking down the most intriguing ecclesiastical stained glass in Greater Vancouver was a chance to also track down my grandfather, George Shilliam Fox. I'm told he was a fine designer and liked to recite Shakespeare and Tennyson, but had no business sense and was superstitious about opening umbrellas inside the house.

My grandfather also wasn't much of a record-keeper. I was told by parents, aunts and uncles that his stained-glass windows went into churches (apparently across Canada), beer parlours, funeral homes, modest houses and fine Shaughnessy mansions, like the one owned by the Koerner family. But it was hard to find out much more than that.

However, my research recently enabled me to see for the first time an old photo of my grandfather, standing in front of his store, Regal Art Glass at 1417 West Broadway, holding a giant stained-glass window of what appears to be Jesus with a shepherd's crook.

With his son, Harry, one of seven children from two wives, my grandfather looks as if he's trying to hide his English immigrant's pride. In the 1910s and '20s, it appears, he was one of Vancouver's premier stained-glass makers. His 1949 Vancouver Sun obituary was headlined: "G.S. Fox, Noted Glass Expert, Dies Aged 76."

I've always wanted to know more about him, in part because he seemed to be the only one of my grandparents or parents who ever got close to entering a church, even if it was for work. Still, his spirituality (anyone who quoted Tennyson must have had inclinations that way) is clouded in mystery.

Regardless of where my family history trail leads, however, one of the great things about pursuing my grandfather was it introduced me to some powerful glass artists, whose ornate works grace hundreds of remarkable, often-ignored windows in churches throughout Greater Vancouver and beyond.

Each one of B.C.'s stained-glass windows seems to come with a story, often an unusual one.

I found beautiful Christmas windows at Holy Rosary Cathedral, which were created by a suspected Italian Fascist known as "The Michelangelo of Montreal."

I discovered an image of Saint Nicholas, upon whom the legend of Santa Claus is based, hovering over Bible characters in medieval dress who were shown standing in Vancouver's Stanley Park.

Some windows include images of barbed wire. Others portrayed preachers on horseback. Holy Rosary Cathedral, to the amusement of Father James Comey, contains a window with a mistake; showing a young Jesus apparently sawing his own carpenter's table in half.

St. John's Methodist Church in Victoria has a notably West Coast window, which melds Moses with a modern-day fly fisherman.

And it's hard to beat the story about one Vancouver church window that had to be installed after the original one was blasted out by a gunman in the middle of the night.

There are hidden stained-glass treasures out there. I suspect even many churchgoers sitting in pews have stopped searching their many details for meaning.

Yet, while some of Greater Vancouver's old stained-glass windows are dulling and buckling with age, others are being restored and new ones being created.

There is a mini-renaissance going on in the stained-glass field, which covers all types of decorative glass that has been dyed, coloured or painted and set in a lead framework.

Heritage buffs, hobbyists, some church members and the tens of thousands of tourists who each year go on walking tours through the city's stained-glass-filled churches think we have some of the finest works around.

At Holy Rosary Cathedral, which last year installed a magnificent circular 100th-anniversary Centennial window above its entrance, Father Comey says there are signs of renewed interest in sacred glass.

"More people," he says, "want to see something beautiful for God in their church."

B.C.'s stained-glass makers are following a Western tradition closely connected with Christianity, which began in Europe in the 1100s, as a way to tell Bible stories to illiterate faithful.

The themes of Greater Vancouver's stained-glass, in many ways, reflect the history of the once-Christian dominated Canadian West -- of missionaries and world-war victims, of pioneers and native Indians.

As the B.C. population has grown increasingly educated, however, more abstract displays of joy and nature and diversity have replaced the earlier, sombre, medieval-style Bible scenes.

The man who probably knows the most about stained-glass windows in the province is Rob Watt, who is now chief heraldry officer for the federal government.

In 1980, Watt put together an exhibit for the Vancouver Museum, titled Rainbows in Our Walls, detailing the history of stained glass in Greater Vancouver, both secular and ecclesiastical, from 1890 to 1940.

Watt loves how Bible stories can be told by allowing the sun's light to pour through glass. Stained-glass windows are a form of communication with the divine, he suggests, because the light which makes them glow is understood as spiritual.

My grandfather is mentioned in the Rainbows in Our Walls catalogue, as one of the rare stained-glass craftsmen who was actually able to make a living in Vancouver when hard times hit during the Depression. Most of that later work probably went into houses.

But Watt says little is known about where George Fox's stained-glass windows were installed, whether in houses, beer parlours or churches, in large part because most pieces in the first half of the 1900s were never signed.

One of the few stained-glass artists about whom a fair deal is known, however, is James Bloomfield, who came to B.C. in the late 1900s, a couple of decades before my grandfather.

"He's the greatest of our stained-glass artists," Watt says.

Bloomfield, whom Canadian Governor-General Lord Aberdeen paid to attend the best art schools in Europe, took the then-bold step of adding lush images from the B.C. landscape , as well as native Indians, to his ecclesiastical stained glass.

One of Bloomfield's 1899 windows at Holy Trinity Church in New Westminster shows the first Anglican bishop of B.C., Acton Sillitoe, surrounded by native men and women in traditional Salish dress.

"When I first saw that, I was astounded. He included native symbols and got it right," says Watt, who adds that other works of Bloomfield and his brothers can also still be seen at St. Paul's Anglican Church in the West End.

Both Watt and Burnaby planner Jim Wolfe, who is writing a biography of Bloomfield, said the world-renowned glass artist was a free thinker, becoming fascinated with B.C.'s native people even before the great Emily Carr did.

University of Minnesota professor Robert Yahnke is another glass aficianado who has been taken with the way stained-glass makers in B.C. have combined Biblical and West Coast imagery.

Yahnke especially likes a window at St. John's Methodist Church in Victoria, titled "Those who make their living from the Sea," which gives B.C. fishing industry workers a kind of Biblical aura.

The large window combines an empassioned Moses drawing water out of a rock with secular images of B.C. people working on a seiner and toiling at a cannery. The bottom depicts a pastoral scene of a flyfisher casting his rod.

One window that caught my imagination for the way it uses West Coast imagery is at St. Paul's and St. Mary's Anglican Church in Lytton. It depicts an early clergyman named Richard Small on horseback, calmly riding the dry rolling hills around the Fraser River. The window inspired an Anglican priest named Cyril Williams to write a book about Small, who died in 1909, titled Archdeacon on Horseback.

Greater Vancouver contains many church windows significant to the Christmas season.

Holy Rosary Cathedral, at Richards and Dunsmuir, has a soaring depiction of an ascended Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. In 1997, the window was chosen to grace Canada's official Christmas stamp.

The celestial image of the Mary with Jesus was created by an artist with a racy past, Guido Nincheri, known as "The Michelangelo of Montreal." Comey says it has surprisingly vivid colours for a stained-glass window of the 1940s. Up until then, church windows tended to use colours that were deep, dark and serious.

Nincheri was surprising in other ways, Comey says with a chuckle. He got himself in trouble with Canada's spy service for creating a stained-glass window for a Montreal church that included the face of Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

When the Second World War broke out, Nincheri was arrested as a suspected traitor. But Nincheri was able to convince authorities he had been forced by his church's leaders to add Mussolini to the Bible window. His reputation redeemed, Nincheri was the subject of a major museum retrospective this year in Montreal.

There are many more traditional and familiar Christmas stories told in church windows around the city -- including a tender nativity scene behind the altar at Christ Church Cathedral. It shows Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in a manger, being admired by angels.

Joseph's unusual staff is capped with a blossoming flower. According to a legend, that was a sign Joseph was favoured by God, above other marriageable men, to become the Virgin Mary's husband.

Another fascinating window with a Christmas connection is at Christ Church (Anglican) Cathedral, at Burrard and Georgia.

As one of my favourites, it's a small stained-glass window depicting St. Nicholas, the saint after which St. Nick, who would later become known as Santa Claus, was modelled.

It shows St. Nicholas, who was also the patron saint of sailors, hovering above and pointing to Stanley Park, where there are three large figures standing wearing flowing Biblical robes. They're watching a Second World War destroyer go under Lions Gate Bridge.

It is an odd juxtaposition of Bible imagery and the then-completely forested snow-covered mountains above West Vancouver. The ship is meant to be a symbol of the word of God and the window is inscribed, "To the memory of the men and women of the Royal Canadian Navy."

As well as Christmas scenes, a host of Biblical themes, including the resurrection, crucifixion, ascension, last supper, women of the Bible, the Creation, story, and Jesus' sermon on the mount, are explored in hundreds, if not thousands, of stained-glass windows in B.C.

Some of the most exciting church windows are those from the past two decades, according to Rob Watt. "The contemporary ones at St. Andrew's Wesley are the ones I find most moving."

The vibrant abstract image at the giant neo-Gothic church, at Burrard and Nelson, which depicts Pentecost, the time when the spirit of the resurrected Christ returns to inspire the disciples, had a bizarre beginning.

It had to be commissioned in the late 1980s to replace an earlier window that had been shot out by a drunken and apparently unhappy chap with a rifle, who had been staying in a room at the adjacent Century Plaza Hotel.

"He pumped 68 bullets through the old window, destroying it completely," said the church's volunteer tour guide, Penny Bishop.

"You can still see one of the bullet holes in the stained-glass window behind the altar."

The piece that replaced the gunman's target is by Lutz Haufschild, arguably the top living stained-glass artist in Vancouver.

Standing taller than two people, the Pentecost window contains dramatic red rays streaking down from the heavens, punctuated by Bible text and etched portraits of the faithful.

Perhaps Lutz's most stunning window is at the Benedictine Abbey in Mission. Its red and blue colours are a testament of gratitude to the Earth and the four elements: water, fire, air and earth.

It's also gigantic. Together, the 86 different windows at the Mission abbey cover an area larger than a soccer field.

"They emphasize the uplifting of the human spirit when contemplating God," Haufschild said in an interview from Europe, where he was working on a project. "They are to remind us how precious the world is."

Haufschild does secular pieces too. He created the 40-metre long "Wave" window at Vancouver International Airport. And occasionally he receives a call to invent a non-Christian piece, including the awe-inspiring geometric patterned-windows at the Ismaili prayer house in Burnaby.

Haufschild's Christian-related work in B.C. includes a multi-faced window at St. Stephen's Church in Summerland and a joyous series of concave windows at multicultural St. Mary's Catholic Church on Joyce in East Vancouver, where parishioners speak a total of 78 different languages.

Why does Haufschild avoid traditional Bible images and go abstract?

"It's the times we live in," he says. "When most people were illiterate, stained glass windows were used by the clergy to explain to the masses the stories of the Bible, like a picture book. My windows are designed for people who have read, travelled and can think for themselves. These windows are not dogmatic in theme or message. But I hope they touch people with the spirit and the eternal beauty of God's universe."

Although only one of Greater Vancouver's stained-glass windows was riddled with bullet holes, battles and war are common themes in many other church windows, which are often commissioned to memorialize the dead.

Christ Church Cathedral contains a sad portrayal of a Canadian soldier dying on a barbed-wire-filled European battlefield during the First World War. Jesus and angels hovers above the lonely figure, directing him to a cross on the hill.

The window is inscribed: "To a good soldier of Christ." Donna Wong-Juliana, a church guide, said the window was donated by one of the Anglican cathedral's early rectors, Cecil Owen, in memory of his son, who was killed during battle in 1916.

One of the most powerful stories of war and stained glass centres on the extensive collection at Canadian Memorial United Church, at 15th and Burrard.

The windows were brought together after the First World War as a testament to peace. The display includes 10 tall windows, one for each province and the Yukon Territory. They combine images from the province's history with Bible motifs.

The charismatic man who headed up the fundraising project for what he hoped would become a national peace memorial was Reverend (Lieut.-Col.) G.O. Fallis, who was a padre in the First World War's trenches.

Horrified by the tragedy of war, the preacher tirelessly raised money by appearing on radio, lobbying top politicians, twisting the arms of business leaders and talking a world-famous contralto into performing in front of 5,200 people at the Vancouver Arena.

One of Canadian Memorial Church's centrepieces is the All-Canada Window, which contains scenes of the death of General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, the coming of Jacques Cartier, the return of the United Empire Loyalists and the driving of the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway at Craiglachie in the Rocky Mountains.

The department of Veterans Affairs' web site says of the All-Canada Window: "The central figure is Miss Canada, depicted as an angelic visitor, holding in her left hand the symbol of peace and in her right hand the laurel wreath, committed to the ideal that 'right not might shall rule the world.' "

Many may find Canadian Memorial's windows a fitting theme for this Christmas, when many are hoping for peace in a terror-riddled world.

I must admit this article just scratches the surface of the history of Greater Vancouver's ecclesiastical stained glass.

And I ran out of time to discover much more than already mentioned about what kind of work my grandfather did in churches. It seems my family was as casual about keeping records as he was.

My aunt Olwen, however, did dig up another tiny photo of George Fox, holding a stained-glass window of a modernist-looking Biblical figure, or angel, playing a lyre.

The fetching window, which may have ended up in an unnamed East Vancouver funeral parlour, suggests my grandfather leaned toward a contemporary sensibility, artistically and spiritually. I like that.

My aunt also says George Fox was drawn to St. Paul's Catholic Church, on the native Indian reserve near the North Vancouver waterfront. He found the twin spires unique. No one I've talked to knows if he ever did a window for the church.

My family of origin leans to the atheist side of the spectrum. As a result, the story my mother Mary most vividly remembers is waiting in the car outside a beer parlour on Hastings near Main, while my grandfather and grandmother went in to celebrate the owner buying one of his pieces.

It's not exactly a spiritually inspiring story. But it's a good yarn. And maybe that's enough.

Can you help? If you know of the whereabouts of any of George Fox's stained-glass windows, please contact Douglas Todd at 604-605-2159 or 604-605-2323 (fax), or at The Vancouver Sun, 200 Granville, Vancouver, B.C., V6C 3N3.

• Photo: George S. Fox poses with his son, Harry, and one of his windows outside his Regal Art Glass shop in the mid-1930s.

• Photo: Stained-glass maker George S. Fox (white-haired man in back) enjoys a sunny day with his family in Horseshoe Bay some time during the late 1930s.

Questions or Comments? E-mail: mountainview.cemetery@vancouver.ca