Christmas

 Merry Christmas.

I tend to mark the day on my blog with churches. I begin today with a shot taken at the end of November in Westboro. This church houses two congregations- All Saints Anglican and First United. I pass by here once a month.

At the end of the prior month, the sanctuary door had been open, and I got a look inside. What I saw surprised me, as I'd thought the sanctuary would be parallel to the street. Instead, it runs northward away from the street. The original sanctuary, to the west, is now a chapel, and the two are joined together by what I'm guessing is office space, since it's all one building from the outside. The pastor I spoke to said the original building dated to the 19th century, and this current sanctuary is from the 1950s.

Taken on the same day as my first shot, this is the Catholic parish of St. George, at the western edge of Hintonburg.

This was taken one early December morning in the Glebe, in pre-dawn light. Here we have Fourth Avenue Baptist Church.

And downtown, this is Centretown United Church.

Snow was falling on the day I took this. St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church is downtown, across from the Supreme Court of Canada.

I'd been inside in late November- their annual Christmas sale. I took a chance to stop inside the sanctuary.

The arrangement of the sanctuary is unusual, with the pulpit off to the side at centre as opposed to at one end of the space.

Something else unusual: among the musical instruments here was a harpsichord.

St. Patrick Basilica is a Catholic church downtown. This time of year they have a nativity creche outside.

And I finish with this shot of Notre Dame Basilica, taken late in the afternoon just a few days ago from across the street at the National Gallery of Canada.