SAVING A 200-YEAR-OLD SCOTTISH CHURCH IN QUÉBEC
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With some care, this old kirk may survive to see its 200th birthday. Built in 1836, it is a lesser known, if not unknown, estate belonging to the United Church of Canada (Pastoral Charge of Argenteuil), but it began life as a Presbyterian church. Its design is that of a typical Scottish country parish building, and it gets its somewhat offbeat designation from the patron saint and founder of Glasgow, Scotland, who can also boast a cathedral to his name. Located on a beautiful rural site along the Ottawa River, halfway between Grenville and Carillon, St. Mungo’s resides in the town of Cushing, Brownsburg-Chatham municipality, Québec. All of this is important to its initial discovery, as well as the fact that the property is on Route 148.
The drive along the north shore of the Ottawa River is spectacular. Here, local farms are interspersed with forest, and you get the impression that nothing much has changed during the past century. The highway and the occasional marina and campground are really the only modern reference points, until you reach the expansive and impressive Carillon Dam.
St. Mungo’s itself sits sedately back from the main road, about midway between a horse ranch and the water. The lawn spreads out about her like an expansive green skirt, and the few nearby properties keep their distance, not quite daring to climb onto her lap.
As for the congregation nowadays, there are few parishioners, mainly a very small group of caretakers and patrons who have succeeded in raising enough funds to supplement government grants and restore the exterior of the building. The group is now working on the interior, which despite its age is remarkably intact.
Late in the 18th century, tracts of land in Chatham township were granted to veterans of the first battalion of the 84th Regiment of Foot, also known as the Royal Highland Emigrants, who fought in the American Revolution (1775-1783) and Seven Years War (1756-1763). Archibald McMillan, whose house still stands in Grenville village, brought some 450 Highlanders from Locharkaig, Scotland, to settle along the river in 1802.
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St. Mungo's first pastor, the Reverend William Mair, came to Canada from Glasgow, Scotland, and took charge of the parish in 1833. However, burials can be traced to the grounds as far back as 1800. There are about a hundred graves in the cemetery, and no room for more. The last burial took place in the 1940s, if you do not count a recent minister’s wife, who was laid to rest there in the 1990s.
The restored stone is an admirable display of craftsmanship that adequately showcases and complements the Gothic windows “of rolled cathedral-stained glass in leaded quarries, with pretty patterns of sash, and harmonizing schemes of colour. The end windows, each panel having a beautiful floral design and text of Scripture burned in, on a ground graduated from deep yellow to white, are exceedingly pretty.”
Cyrus Thomas in the History of the Counties of Argenteuil, Que. and Prescott, Ont., 1896 
Built by the stonemasons who worked on the Ottawa River canals, St. Mungo’s played an important role in uniting the vibrant Scottish pioneer community who helped develop western Québec in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. McMillan himself remarked that he had never heard more Gaelic spoken than he did along the Ottawa River Valley.
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