Sylvan Lake Church marks 75th

All are welcome at Our Lady of Assumption Church

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
Sylvan Lake

Some 500 parishioners crowded the small church at 5033-47A Ave. for the morning Mass and about half of them attended the potluck supper that followed at the gym of St. Margaret Catholic School.

Archbishop Thomas Collins presided at the service assisted by pastor Paul Moret and Father Nathaniel Oliveira, a visiting priest from Brazil.

The fact the 250-family parish is still going at 75 "is a great sign for the faith," Collins said in an interview after the Mass. "This is a wonderful, vibrant parish. I noticed people of all ages, young and old in the congregation.

"I noticed particularly the wonderful involvement of the young people of the parish in many different dimensions of the celebration today and I really think that's great. It's especially important as we try to put into practice what World Youth Day is all about."

Jim Lazzari, chair of the parish pastoral council, says the parish has a relatively large number of young families, noting the majority of parishioners today are young couples who work in the agricultural sector, the construction industry or the oil-related industry in the Red Deer-Sylvan Lake area.

"There is a great mix here," he says. "I see people of all ages in church, but 60 per cent of the parishioners are people who have moved into the area in the last five years."

Over the past two decades, the town's population has quadrupled, resulting in an increase in the Catholic population as well.

To accommodate the growth, the parish will build a new church on donated land within five years, Lazzari said.

"We don't feel the age here," said youth minister Rhonda Schwab. "We are a very active parish. We are very good about keeping youth involved, welcoming younger families and getting them involved with the older people."

More than 26 young people belong to the parish youth group, which sent three youth to World Youth Day and plans to visit the Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine in Mexico in March.

Children are also involved. About 40 members of the Mother Teresa Catholic school choir sang during the 75th anniversary Mass.

The teacher who led the choir, Lorelei Weeres, 30, thinks Our Lady of the Assumption Parish hasn't aged because it is active and welcoming.

"There are a lot of young people. There are also a lot of members who have been here for many years. I think this is a community that has been so welcoming that it is not just an older congregation; it's multigenerational."

"I think this is a community that has been so welcoming that it is not just an older congregation; it's multigenerational." - Lorelei Weeres

Jason Anderson, 18, says he likes the atmosphere at Our Lady of Assumption. "People are really nice here, very welcoming. They make me feel home."

Jessica Coppens, 25, agrees, saying the parish's main characteristic is its unity. "We are very much together here. There are no strangers."

Moret, the parish pastor, says Catholics in Sylvan Lake have worked hard to keep the parish going and their efforts have paid off.

"This is a vibrant, active and welcoming parish and we are trying to be more of that all the time," he said.

Ed Dietrich and his wife Johanna, the church's caretakers, have been members of the parish since 1996 and regard it as their extended family. "This parish is a great part of our lives," Johanna said, describing it as vibrant, enthusiastic and welcoming.

Ed said the parish today is very different from what it was when they first arrived. In those days the parish wasn't as united as it is today and the social atmosphere wasn't very good either. Father Joseph Ayling, who served from 1988 to 1993, "did a lot to bring the people together," he recalled.

He said Father Sylvain Casavant, who left Sylvan Lake in 1999, also helped improve the social atmosphere.

"At the beginning we didn't have much of a social life in the parish, but Father Casavant did a lot to change that. He brought new life to the parish."

The parish was established in 1927, but its beginnings go back to 1912, a year before Sylvan Lake was incorporated as a village. Catholic families then attended services in a modest chapel built on the site of the present church, on land donated by Alexandre Loiselle.

This tiny mission church was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and named Our Lady of the Assumption.

A severe downturn of the economy between 1915 and 1924 resulted in an exodus of the Sylvan Lake population.

A third of the parishioners were gone, but the remaining faithful persevered through this depression.

In 1927, Our Lady became a parish for the first time. Then followed a period of transition in which it was downgraded to a mission, then back to a parish again.

Father J.O. Sullivan, the seventh priest of the parish, arrived in Sylvan Lake in 1963 and immediately recognized the need for a newer and larger church.

A new church was built on the same site two years later. Archbishop Anthony Jordan dedicated and blessed it May 23, 1965. Sullivan, who had been so instrumental in the building of the new church, died quietly in the rectory May 17, 1967.

Father Michael Heffernan arrived in September 1967, facing a seemingly insurmountable debt on the new church. However, with his financial skill, the mortgage was retired in 1976, two years before its due time. According to Ed Dietrich, Heffernan served without a salary to help the parish pay off its debt.

In the early 1990s, Sylvan Lake lost its resident pastor as Our Lady of the Assumption was clustered with St. Margaret's in Rimbey and the missions of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Bentley and St. John Bosco in Winfield.

The four-parish cluster has been served from Rimbey since 1994. To help in the transition, Sister Camille Campbell served as pastoral assistant in Sylvan Lake for two years until 1994.

Father Sylvan Casavant replaced Father Peter Sharpe as pastor of the cluster of parishes in 1994 and worked tirelessly toward the establishment of a Catholic separate school in Sylvan Lake. Mother Teresa Catholic School opened in September 2000 with dedication services led by Archbishop Collins in March 2001.

In 1999 Casavant became vocations director for the Edmonton Archdiocese and was replaced by Moret, who says Mass in Sylvan Lake three times a week, including Sundays.

Plans are currently underway at Our Lady of Assumption to build a new church within five years. The town's population has quadrupled in the past decade and so has the Catholic population.

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