By Jim Hagarty
2016
There is a beautiful old church in my town which is being torn down this week. I can hardly believe it. I haven’t been keeping up with the local news lately so it comes as a shock.
I have never been a member of this church, but it has served as a community centre for years so my family and I have had lots of reasons to go there. We will miss it.
There were not enough church members left to keep it going. In my town, there are a total of four churches of this same Christian denomination. Too many for a town this size. So the members of this church joined with the members of one of the others and moved to that other one. The one being demolished needed repairs and there was just not enough resources to do that.
Our community loses significant buildings this way and has lost them for years. And for years I have argued that once a building such as a church becomes such a beautiful and significant part of a community, it should become a community responsibility to keep it going.
If you think I am talking about taxes, you would be right. Not a popular position but once these beautiful old buildings are gone, they are gone. The community is diminished.
We are a tourist town. We have five live theatres and attract a million people a year to a place with a population of 35,000. Soon, there will be one less attraction for them to see.
That’s a shame.
