STANLEY MISSION - - Cultures combined Thursday to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Holy Trinity Anglican Church, the oldest building in Saskatchewan.
Descendents of Rev. Robert Hunt, who built the church, joined the community of Stanley Mission for the event.
"It's awe-inspiring. I'm choked up ... It's very humbling to think that somebody from so long ago is still held in high esteem," said Linda Blackman, a fifth-generation Hunt.
Blackman travelled with her sister, Margaret Wynne, and four other family members, from the United Kingdom, to the site their great-great grandfather created.
"It's just lovely to be here, it's the oldest building here and it's still treasured," said Wynne.
Wynne and her family learned of Hunt's work through a thesis written by Jaye Fredrickson in the 1970s. She was also at the church for the celebration.
"It's just incredible. I've got tears in my eyes. It's amazing," she said.
The community was happy to receive them, and visitors from across Saskatchewan, for a day packed with culture and history - jigging, crafts, a fish fry and mass held in Holy Trinity.
"That church is our connection to the past. We need to look after it in the present, so that the future may enjoy it as we have," said Joe Roberts, an elder in Stanley Mission and caretaker of the church, about what he was told as a child.
The Stanley Mission First Nation keeps the church maintained using band money.
"That's what makes me very proud. We took it on our own to do it and we're still doing it," Roberts said.
He said he was humbled to meet the Wynne, Blackman and their families.
"I know the history from my side of the people who worked on the church, grew up around the church and associated with the church ... spending time with these people I'm learning the Robert Hunt side," he said.
The histories are similar.
"When I listen to my elders, the people of Stanley (Mission) talking, it's about how much respect they had for Robert Hunt, how much respect they had for the church ... it's the same on their side - how much respect Robert Hunt had for the people he was administering to ... he was part of the community. Hand-in-hand he worked with them, lived with them."
The church is more than just history.
"Not only does the church provide a place of worship, it provides a whole well-being ... our whole well-being of who we are. People come here to meditate, people come here to retreat, people come here to celebrate, people have come here to be confirmed, for weddings, for funerals, so many things happen in this place and they gather here," Tammy Cook-Searson, chief of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, which includes Stanley Mission.
The church is expected to be central in the community into the future also.
"The church has brought us so much prosperity over the years, with tourism, we are hoping to expand on that," said Gordon Hardlott, director of operations for the Stanley Mission band and one of the event organizers.
