St. John’s and the “Car Park” when the 80th Anniversary was celebrated in 1947

The church decorated for the Anniversary Service

The 80th Anniversary of St. John’s was, as far as we know, the first time that the interior of the church was recorded on film. While most of the interior has remained surprisingly unchanged, elements of the altar area and certainly the pulpit to the right have been modified over the years. You are invited to compare the above 1947 image with that of the current church interior found on our home page. See how many changes you can find!

The service in progress with Pastor Kirchhofer speaking to the left of the altar

Rev. J. L. Kirchhofer came to be the Pastor of St. John’s in July of 1938, and appears to have been the first Pastor born and raised in Canada, rather than having been born in Germany. It was in April of 1939, at a meeting chaired by Pastor Kirchhofer, that the decision was made to conduct english services every second Sunday. Subsequently, in the early 1940’s (the date has not been ascertained as yet), the German services were discontinued.

Pastor Kirchhofer has left us some illuminating descriptions of the winter conditions to be found in Petawawa during the 1940’s. He writes, in part:

“One February we were almost snowed under, huge drifts were to be seen everywhere, even the roads were impassable … our two daughters were only able to attend [school] eight days that month … our faithful horse “Liebling” hesitated to make the trip through hip deep snow … the next means of travel was for me to put on a pair of snow shoes with a pack sack on my back and walk the two miles to and from the village. The homeward trip was somewhat strenuous because my pack sack was laden with groceries … as time went on the Military Camp kept the road open, [as] this made travel easier for our men to go to work at the Camp, rather than walk with snow shoes .. having used show shoes before I volunteered to travel to the village and perform the marriage [of Frank Zadow and Florence Eichsteadt], [and] the following was the headline in the Pembroke Observer, “Minister Travels on Snowshoes To Perform Wedding.” I never thought that I would get such publicity, however it was good advertising for our church.”