St. Matthew the Apostle Oriole Anglican Church was established in 1964 in the Don Mills/Sheppard area. This document profiles who we are, what we do, how we care for ourselves and others, the resources we draw upon, and our goals.
St. Matthew is located in the Henry Farm area of Willowdale, Toronto, west of the Don Mills Road and Sheppard Avenue intersection, and close to the Fairview Mall, one of Toronto’s largest shopping centres. Major construction projects are ongoing in the Canadian Tire area (Concord Building) and at Parkway Forest, and the original ‘Anglo/Christian’ character of the local community is being replaced by an ethnically diverse and mainly un-churched population. This presents an enormous missional opportunity and an exciting challenge for St. Matthew.
St. Matthew is highly driven by outreach and missional projects and is one of the pilot parishes in the Missional Action Transformation process conducted by the Diocese where in the last four years we have undertaken a series of visioning exercises to determine the direction in which the parish should be moving. We were also one of the pilot parishes for the Our Faith Our Hope fundraising campaign of the Diocese.
The parish is able to offer space to a number of licensees, most of which fall under our outreach and nurturing focus as a congregation.
Due to its prime location and the talents and strengths within the congregation, St. Matthew is both an established and influential parish within the York Mills Deanery.
The land on which we gather is the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Anishinabek Nations, and the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. This territory was the subject of the Dish-With-One-Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. This territory is also covered by the Toronto Purchase. Today, Toronto is home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island.
We recognize the enduring presence of Indigenous peoples connected to and on this land. We are grateful for the opportunity to gather on this territory and work in this community, and we commit ourselves to the work of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.
