Art On Loan
The Archives Committee discovered recently that the font cover had disappeared from
the St. Mark’s Church. It is a bronze sculpture depicting St. Mark holding a Bible in his
hand and standing beside a winged lion, an ancient symbol frequently associated with the
preaching ministry of St. Mark. The bronze is the work of Jacobin Jones, a native of
Niagara on the Lake.
Careful sleuthing and a few discrete questions led us to the museum, where the sculpture
forms part of a show entitled The Forgotten Years. We were promised that they are
merely “borrowing it”. The show includes many Niagara artists, both professional and
amateur whose creative period covers the years 1929 to1973.
At first glance this choice of time span appears rather strange, until one recognizes it is a
period when tourists did not come to the town in any great numbers. Before that the
Queens Royal Hotel was a social centre. Young people crossed from Toronto for the
Friday night “sock hop”. When the hotel was destroyed by fire, this tourist invasion
stopped until the Shaw Festival began to draw crowds once again. During those years
Niagara was just a small, quiet village. It is this period that is portrayed in the art of the
Museum’s show.
These were the difficult years of the great depression and the Second World War. People
who lived in Niagara during that time will recognize Bishop’s fish shop and the Niagara
Public School. Artists’ names like Dr. Rigg and Margaret Peake Benton, will be familiar
to them. Like the font cover from St. Mark’s, the work of these people is also on loan to
the museum for this show.
Many of the artists’ names appear in the St. Mark’s Archives, in lists of Parish members,
in the annual vestry minutes, among the Altar and Ladies Guilds and in the business
decisions of the parish. People who are involved in community activities tend to be
involved as well in the activities of one church or another.
We trust that when the show has run its span, the bronze sculpture will be returned to the
Church. We would also like to “borrow” the wonderful pencil sketch of St. Mark’s
Church that forms part of the exhibit.