Abandonment Issues: Victoria Methodist Church 1893

"How can you get through the day without God?" a devout man once asked me, adding how torturous it must be, how empty it must feel.

I didn't answer because there was nothing that i could say to him that would be more effective than silence. He wanted to convert me and more than anything he wanted to be right. He needed to be right. If he's not right, and he can't keep convincing people that he's right, the whole thing collapses in on him like a house of cards. Oh how torturous that must be, how empty it must feel.

Within days of pasting this scroll up on a skytrain pillar in Vancouver in August, 2009, my email accounts were bombarded with religious scriptures and outreach messages.



These people were trying to convince me that god was speaking directly to me through their actions, in response to what they perceived to be an outcry. They wanted me to accept their christ as my lord and savior merely to validate their own belief structure, and they wore it on their sleeves.



On this day, in early June of 2011, the congregation consisted of ninja IX and her brother RJPN, as well as our good friends open5 and Melanie, who were visiting from Vancouver. I approached the podium and cleared my throat, then belted out segmented bible portions out of context in the thickest southern baptist accent i could muster. I read aloud...

"To see Jesus who he was because he was little of and climbed up into for he was to pass that came to the place, he and said unto him, come down: for today haste, and come down. Amen."

i had trouble holding the character through to the end of the quote and burst into laughter like Jimmy Fallon used to do every Saturday night. Our collective laughter echoed back at us.

preaching to the choir


today's sermon


Sitting in a back pew, i watched my flock gather up front and scatter as brother RJPN opened the back of the organ and proclaimed that it had been gutted. Ope and Melanie wandered around wide-eyed, smiling at each other with that young love look in their eyes. These two young lovers were over a month into a journey from Vancouver to Quebec City and back, through America. They have been sleeping in a car and squatting in abandoned buildings along the way. Such a romantic pilgrimage, going nowhere together. For those of you that don't know, the homie Open5 is one of Vancouver's most prolific and adored graffiti artists, and is a dear friend of the IX family.

RJPN could never understand our obsession with abandoned places until this moment. In fact he detested that we were taking risks that he deemed to be stupid. He has never been to church in his life, and the only other abandoned house he's been in was out near Bancroft when he was a kid. In the late nineties we brought him up a long overgrown driveway in the thick forest, which he was afraid of, and came upon an abandoned house containing a dental chair in the depths of the dark basement. He still speaks ill of that experience on this day. But he gets it now, he says its not for him, but he now understands and is accepting of our choices, which is a luxury preached but never practiced by religious types in my personal experiences. In fact, he manned up and explored every other spot we stopped at during this week at the cottage.

Ninja IX was lurking silently, acting as the eyes and ears of the operation. Now that you've met the congregation, it's time to explore The Victoria Methodist Church that was built in 1893 in Havelock, Ontario.

The ironic baa of sheep can be heard from a nearby field as the congregation is herded out into the graveyard to allow me to photograph the empty church.

congregation


sunday morning


patterned after the lord and reflecting in his image

pew indeed


pass the collection plate


burning in hell for eternity


devil on your shoulder


the sins of the father


backroom deals


Toronto Star, Thursday, November 18th, 1976


a moment of silence


if i should die before i wake...


benching


the hymnary


August 23rd, 1959


Hymnary's Greatest Hits, Top 10's and B-Sides


Amen


Statement of Faith


To the Needs and Opportunities of a Postwar World


all are welcome


disorganized


this church was not an organ donor, apparently


organisn't


DOMINION ORGAN CO. MOUSEPROOF PATENTED 87


camp dirty


organic


no one's ark


The C-Word - Church


serenity now!


a window into the past


passed collection plate


While the church itself is no longer in use, the graveyard and church property are fairly well maintained. In order to help keep animals from using the church as a toilet, i returned the next morning with a multi-tool and sealed the P.O.E.

click here to check out all of jerm & ninja IX's ABANDONMENT ISSUES

Abandonment Issues: Havelock Horse House

Sometimes you find a place that takes your breath away. First by the visuals, then by the scent. The Havelock Horse House stole my breath.

My hair was still soaked from tipping a kayak while traveling backwards over the tiny rapids in the river that connects Cordova and Belmont Lakes when i hopped the rusted gate and disappeared into the overgrowth behind farm machinery and trailers, and animal cages and traps. Old cars and trucks were garden beds to the reclaiming force of nature's revenge. Fences, antennas and satellite dishes all intertwined with vines and grasses.

The farm itself is still active, with at least a dozen horses out back beside a well maintained barn. It appears as though someone has bought the property solely for use of the farm and chosen to neglect the house and it's contents, as well as the vast rugged property that stretches for hundreds of acres down to the lake, which is swallowing up the machinery and vehicles of years past.







As the door opened, as did a glimpse into the past. Time stopped here, and you can smell it. Everything you can imagine is scattered about on the floor as if the house has been looted nine times and no one ever took anything. The antique stove and bathtub are in stark contrast to the VHS tape of John Q and a dirty calender that reads 2005.

I lifted the key cover on the piano and freestyled a few seconds of bad jazz that lingered as one of the keys got stuck and hummed out the end of it's note like Mariah Carey on morphine. The first floor is unstable and some of the floorboards are warped and buckling. Most of the floor is buried under material possessions and is not visible, which is an obvious hazard. The smell is overwhelming, the nostrils burn. A step outside for fresh air is needed before heading upstairs.

















Upstairs, tight corners through a hoarders paradise twist and turn from room to room. Exercise bikes and 90s hockey cards in plastic sheets stacked on an antiquated hard drive tower stood out through the lens of my camera. Yet again, the smell overwhelmed. Another step outside, another breath of fresh air.















One more big inhale and a feather-like fluttering jaunt through to the back room.

The back room was the highlight, a pair of chairs sitting in front of a furnace. Plaques on the wall for equestrian achievements in 1993 bear a girls name and hang beside other horse paraphernalia and framed pictures of horses. Shelves hold up decorative plates with horse images and while fighting for breath i laughed and choked on the putrid air as a few of the horses out back neighed and thumped their hooves down as if to announce their displeasure with my presence.









On that note, i was outside panting, photographing the expansive property and breathing in the freshest air i'd ever tasted.

Moments later, i was back at the Colonel, just up the road. One of our family cottages is in this area and we have found a virtual smörgåsbord of abandoned locations to feast on in this neck of the woods.

Stay tuned my friends.

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-UPDATE-

On a chilly day in early January, 2012, after fellow explorers L'Ali, Squalie, Ryanstar and myself got caught by the farmer within 5 minutes of entering the Down Family Farmhouse, we explored another handful of houses. Sometimes luck just isn't on your side though. Within five minutes here as well, the farmers pulled up and angrily screamed at us to leave, and never return. Just as in the Down House, I only took two photos before their arrival.





click here to check out all of jerm & ninja IX's ABANDONMENT ISSUES