Group of Seven murals were considered destroyed after church fire. Here’s how they are being brought back to life

The mural 'Healing of the Palsied Man' before (Left) and after (Right) the fire at St. Anne's Anglican Church. (Courtesy of Toronto Art Restoration Inc.)

Months after the devastating fire that burned down St. Anne’s Anglican Church and destroyed some incredible pieces of Canadian history, all is not lost.

Pieces of art and some murals from the church have been retrieved and are now undergoing a restoration process by Toronto Art Restoration Inc. (TARI), based in the GTA.

According to the TARI website, the company has previously worked on numerous paintings, sculptures, works on paper, monuments and architectural arts, including murals, and are members of associations devoted to maintaining Canadian cultural and heritage objects.

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Alicia Coutts, the director of Toronto Art Restoration Inc. specializes in conservation and restoration treatments for historical and modern works of art.

Coutts is trained by the Canadian Conservation Institute to salvage cultural heritage objects, artifacts and fine art. She has worked with objects from flood and fire incidents before.

“It’s not our only specialization, but we do work with a lot of insurance companies and emergency relief companies,” Coutts says.

Coutts was first brought into the picture by Frank Corimer, who volunteers as the People’s Warden at the church. Corimer also specializes in heritage buildings as a property manager and knew about Coutts and her work, he told CTV News.

“I knew pretty quickly who the right people to call were,” Corimer says.

The rescued artwork

A total of 15 pieces were in the collection, of which five complete pieces were recovered, along with an additional four fragments, Corimer said. The majority of the artwork was lost in the fire. Corimer says the murals have been a part of St. Anne’s for over a century.

The art restoration team, along with Coutts, inspected the pieces thoroughly and determined that only three full-sized murals were “significantly” salvageable, along with two fragments.

The rest were “too badly gone” says Coutts.

The three murals she and her team are currently working on are ‘Christ in the Garden,’ ‘The Tempest’ and ‘Healing of the Palsied Man.’

The conservation and restoration process

When the pieces were first brought to them, they were covered in mold due to fire suppression and rain, Coutts recalls.

The process began with the team working their way through all the topical debris, soot and mold to stabilize and dry the murals.

Coutts chose with the most stable piece to start with and is still doing the preliminary cleaning.

“We’ve been looking at a lot of archives, so we’re able to see what they look like and then that informs me while I’m cleaning,” Coutts told CTV News. “This one mural so far has gone from complete blackness, you could not see anything at all, to now I can definitely see where all the shapes, forms, imagery is supposed to be.”

The aim is not to bring the artwork back to a completely new state, Coutts explained, “because then you would lose all of that kind of charm and history that’s in there.”

Corimer shares the sentiment.

“The fire is part of the story now. We can’t change history,” he says. “Part of St. Anne’s story now, part of the mural story now, is the fire.”

The restoration team has discovered a signature on one of the murals they have been working on. The name reads ‘Stuart,’ but the last name is unclear.

Moving forward after the fire

Corimer recalls that after the fire occurred, the other members of the team at the church were all focused on moving forward. “We owed better to that building; we were not going to miss a Sunday.”

Fortunately, they had the parish hall building on their site. All the other members devoted their time to moving into the new building, while Corimer was focused on dealing with the fallout from the fire.

Now, the plans for rebuilding are being discussed with an architect, Corimer says.

They won’t be reconstructing the building exactly the way as it was before the fire, he says. They’re going to deliberate the plans for a year, before a decision is made.

“It would be a dishonor to a friend to try to make a photocopy of something that was special,” Corimer says. “So, we will not try to show her any disrespect by pretending we can do it again.”

St. Anne’s Anglican Church: The history

St. Anne’s Anglican Church was built in 1907 and 1908 and was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996. It housed several works of 10 prominent artists, including a series of murals considered the only known religious works painted by three members of the Group of Seven.

It was the second church constructed at the site. The first one was built in 1862, in the same spot.

According to the church’s website, a Group of Seven founding member, J.E.H. MacDonald commissioned the interior design, subsequently enlisting several artists including Fred Varley and Frank Carmichael who later became a part of the Group of Seven.

Prior to the fire, the heritage building served as a valuable member of the local community, according to Corimer.

“We’ve had good times and bad times, our neighborhood has had good times and bad times, our neighbours have had good times and bad times,” Corimer says. “And we keep on keeping on. We’re committed to being part of the community.”

The church site will be opened up as a parkette or a public space by spring, Corimer says, at least for a couple of years while they continue to discuss its future with the city.

“It takes a village to raise a child. And it takes a lot of villages to live a life,” he says. “And we all try our best to look out for each other and try to support one another.”

The cause of the fire remains unclear. The Office of the Fire Marshal continues to investigate.