Seventeen years after the Ralph Connor Memorial United Church was built in 1890, my mother’s mother, Camellia Besso and her brother Adolph, themselves children of a Protestant (Waldesian) minister in Italy, arrived in Canmore. They stayed in the Canmore Hotel that night. Upon awakening the next morning, Grandma looked out her window and found that the sod-covered, flat-roofed log cabins along Main Street were covered with a foot of snow! Snow in August! This was just too much after sunny Italy. My grandmother declared that, “it would indeed be a miracle if she lasted a year in Canada”. Three days later, on August 25, 1907, after the Sunday evening service, my grandmother married her childhood sweetheart, Antonio Chiaverina, who had come to Canada the year before. They made their home in Canmore and raised their children in Bankhead and in Canmore, within the church community. Of course, Grandma stayed in Canada for the rest of her life, and her funeral service took place in the United Church on October 7, 1966.
My grandparents would be pleased to know that eighty-eight years after their marriage here, their descendants, daughter, Marie Rodda, granddaughter Lorraine Fraser, great-granddaughters, Cori and Karen Fraser, their husbands, and great-great- grandsons, Fraser and John Nasset, still make the United church their spiritual home.
After the closure of the mines at Bankhead, my mother and her family moved back to Canmore. The whole family was involved in the church, which in those pioneer times, was a true community centre.
In 1928, my mother married Alphonse Rodda on a Sunday morning before the regular morning service. My sister, Corrinne, and I were born in the years that followed. We were, of course, baptized in the United Church, I, in 1929 and Corrinne, in 1932, and were quickly enveloped into the church family. Like many of my generation, we spent many, many hours at the church. As well as the regular Sunday service, there was Sunday school, a fabulous church choir led by the very talented Charlie Hemsley, confirmation classes, youth groups, church picnics and suppers.
In May, 1950, I married my husband, John Fraser, in the United Church and subsequently moved to Exshaw. The church here and in its “pastoral charge” of Exshaw were truly a home for my family. My two daughters, Karen and Corrinne (Cori) were baptized in 1954 and 1961 and continued the church traditions by attending Sunday School, Explorers, CGIT, Youth Groups and Confirmation classes in Exshaw. I continued my own involvement with the Ladies Aid, later renamed United Church Women, where we worked hard, had a lot of fun and showed time and time again what hard-working women can accomplish.
My daughters were also married in the United Church, Cori to Roy Nasset in 1989, and Karen to Ian Schofield, on August 27, 1977, which was interestingly enough, seventy years and two days after her great-grandparents! I have no doubt that my young grandsons, Fraser and John Nasset, will soon be active in the United Church.
In Canmore Seniors at the Summit, ed. Canmore Seniors Association, 2000, p. 92
