It was a time for remembering and paying homage to times past. The rectory beside Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Greenwood has been sold and the Catholic Women’s Club held a final tea and bake sale in the house last Saturday.
Rev. Father J.A. Bedard built the house in 1905 for priests who served the area from Grand Forks to Beaverdell.
Downstairs is a large sitting room and an eating area off of the kitchen.
There were five upstairs bedrooms at one time, four today since the stairs to the attic room have been removed. The wall separating two of the bedrooms is a partition that stopped a foot short of the ceiling.
“It has a modest kind of understated finish – not a grand finish,” said Father Marcel Cote as he took a tour through the building. “You get the sense that there was not a lot of coin spared.”
Fine wood went into the house though and it will be a delight to see the floors and other woodwork restored.
He said the people who have purchased the house are from northern BC and are wanting to restore it, “Which is even better than we would have hoped, and they are good at it (heritage restoration). We have seen some of the work they have done before.”
The ceilings are tall – at least ten feet high. Built in the day when sunlight was used for daytime lighting, the windows are high, which made the house hard to heat.
There are two central chimneys so that each room could have it’s own heater.
Nellie Lucente, whose in-laws owned the house from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, recalled there being seven stoves in the house at that time. She said the beautiful wood burning cook stove still in the kitchen had come from Wells and had once belonged to Snuffy Smith’s mother.
Nellie and Albert, her husband of 65 years, lived in the house for a year after they were married.
On the alter at the end of the second floor hallway were the books, clothes, candles and wine that the early priests in the area would put into their backpack for their walk to the churches and mission houses throughout the Boundary.
According to Cote, some of the items sitting on the alter that afternoon had come from the other local churches that were closed. “There was a church in Bridesville, in Phoenix, at the Mother Lode, in almost every little town,” said Cote.
Cote said that the Brothers of the Sacred Heart have taken a vow of poverty and many of them did not have horses.
“Two or three would go out regularly, and they would be traded up – the guys from the east would come in and those men would move on.”
The bathroom features a claw foot bathtub that likely hastened their step while on the trail, as well as bringing them comfort when they returned home.
“You look at the house and it is esthetically pleasing – it’s okay, but not elaborate,” noted Cote. “It’s not decorated – it’s plastered – done almost on the cheap.”
One of the bedrooms has a painted mural around the wall near the ceiling. Cote explained that it was not original to the house, but was put there by Hollywood when the room did a cameo appearance in the film Snow Falling on Cedars.
Over the years, when the church would have a parish priest, there would be a soup pot on and people would be able to have a room for a night.
“Right up to today the CWC kept clean linens on the beds – for a long period of time there were people passing through. There was that hospitality offered and it was continued,” said Father Cote.
The house was sold because the annual property taxes were a financial burden on the CWC.
Father Cote serves the Diocese of Nelson as priest for the three remaining Sacred Heart locations in the Boundary – Greenwood, Grand Forks and Christian Lake.
A name that came up many times at the afternoon tea was that of Father Agnellus Pickelle, who was the parish priest for 25 years and spent many of those years living in the house. During the internment of Japanese through WWII the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of Atonement would have used the house at some time during their stay too.
Rose Boltz, who serves as chair for the CWC, expressed her appreciation for the many people who have supported the group through the years by coming to their teas. The CWC will continue to hold teas in the future – at a venue yet to be announced.
Winner of the door prize was Barb Smith; Solange Jacob and Jeannie Higashi won food hampers. There were 16 raffle prizes as well.