Spirit of Toronto 1834-1984

G.A. Rawlyk is a history professor at Queen’s University and the
author of Champions of the Truth: Fundamentalism, Modernism, and the
Maritime Baptists.

This is a book about various religious groups now worshipping in the Toronto region. There are brief discussions of major churches, such as the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, and United, as well as of some more obscure groups like the Swedenborgians, Zoroastrians, and Rastafarians. All chapters have the same general format. There is first a description of the origins of the specific group, often within its Toronto context. Then there is a section devoted to the “beliefs” of the group, and finally there is a discussion of “Contemporary Community Activity.”

Spirit of Toronto, unfortunately, possesses little spirit and even less literary and scholarly sophistication. There is, however, some useful historical information concerning the Christadelphians and Jehovah’s Witnesses, in particular. Little else in this volume will prove to be of interest to even the specialist in Toronto religious history.