The congregation of St. Paul’s first met in 1842 in a small wooden church on the outskirts of Toronto. On that same spot today, St. Paul’s stands as a towering landmark on a bustling downtown street. St. Paul’s is three buildings – the “Old Church” erected in 1860, the “New Church” built in 1913 and “Cody Hall” constructed in 1928. The Atrium completed in 2006 now connects all three of these historic buildings into a single complex.

In 1913 at the opening of the New Church the then Rector of St. Paul’s, the Rev’d Canon Dr. Henry Cody said the following: “The Church’s duty is to reach out and dig down – the two go together. No institution will prosper which does not believe in itself, its mission, its need, its power of God. The Church of God will never advance if her policy is merely to keep alive. Defensive tactics win no battles. The Church that holds her own is in peril of waning. The strength of the Church is to leave the fortress and march boldly to fresh forms of enterprise for God the Omnipotent is with us. He is our partner. Therefore we cannot fail.” We are still convicted today of this reality.

For nearly 166 years St. Paul’s Bloor Street has existed to transform the world through the power and grace of Jesus Christ.