Sheila Urquhart
The tomb of Rev. William Durie in Beechwood Cemetery. St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church will unveil a plaque and reveal the restored monument on Sept. 29.For Sheila Urquhart, the historian at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the restoration of a crumbling monument to the church’s beloved early minister, Rev. William Durie, is about much more than just the rededication of his tomb and a plaque.
“It is such a moving story, a story of Bytown in the typhus epidemic.”
Through extensive research on Durie, the church’s third ever minister, Urquhart found out he was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1804 and came to Ottawa in 1846 to be minister of St. Andrew’s at the age of 42.
“Ottawa usually had typhus cases every late summer, in August and September, when the Ottawa River water was low, and there were always a few deaths each year.”
The 1847 typhus outbreak was worsened by the arrival of already infected Irish immigrants fleeing famine at home.
“It was just awful these were innocents getting on [boats] in Ireland with hope for their family. They were packed on and if there were just a couple of lice they all got typhus and it kept happening. Just awful,” she said.
Typhus is spread by lice and causes the sufferer to have a fever and rash. It can be fatal if left untreated.
Durie took it upon himself to tend to the newly arrived Irish immigrants, Urquhart said. “He couldn’t rest because just steps away, they were lying where they fell.”
Durie caught the disease while working and died in September 1847, after only nine months of being minister at the church, Urquhart said.
He was an important figure while he was minister at the Wellington Street church and continues to be important to the congregation today, said Rev. Karen Dimock, the current minister of St. Andrew’s.
He was a prominent member of the Bytown community and his death at the time was a huge blow to the church.
Durie’s obituary in the Ottawa Advocate says he was well liked not only by his congregation, but also by the general public.
“In the discharge of his religious duties as a faithful pastor, he was constant and indefatigable; and while able to do so, no consideration – no apprehension of danger – could prwevent his attendance on the sick and dying; or interfere with the natural impulse of his nature to minister to the necessities of the wretched,” it says.
St. Andrew’s will reveal the restored monument at the Beechwood Cemetery on Sept. 29 when Dimock will lead a ceremony to rededicate the large stone tomb over his grave and unveil a plaque to commemorate his death.
The need to restore the monument recently became more urgent and the community is grateful to be able to do the $5,000 repairs, Urquhart said. The 168-year-old tomb was weathered and cracked, and the top was fractured in half. It was originally white, but has since become blackened by time and moving from a different cemetery in the Sandy Hill neighbourhood of Ottawa.
“It was pitch black, older people here remember it being white and now it’s grey,” Urquhart said.
Judy Dodds, a member of the St. Andrew’s congregation, said the restoration has been planned for a number of years and said she is happy it is finally happening.
Dodds said the restoration of the monument is significant for St. Andrew’s and members of the congregation.
“I think that for the people who have some understanding of the history of the church, it’s exciting. I’m not sure if everyone knows about it though,” she said.
Dimock says St. Andrew’s will continue to give importance to preserving its past while it moves forward.
“We tell our history a lot here and we tell it in ways that tell us who we are,” she said. “When we tell the stories of our past we remember the part we played and it also tells us the part we are still called to play as a people.”