Our Parish Ministry

The Anglican church in the heart of Vanier.

Two congregations. One parish.
ᐊᖕᒋᓕᑲᓐᑯᑦ ᑐᒃᓯᐊᕐᕕᖁᑎᐊ ᕿᑎᐊᓂᑦᑐᖅᕙᓐᔨᐊ.

ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᑐᒃᓯᐊᕐᕕᒻᒧᑦ. ᒪᕐᕈᐃᓕᖃᖓᕙᑦᑐᑦ ᑐᒃᓯᐊᕆᐊᖅᑐᑦ.

St. Margaret's is a diverse, multilingual urban parish with two congregations, English and Inuktitut. We pray, worship, play, and serve God together by caring for one another and our neighbours with faith, hope and love. 

We are disciples of Jesus Christ. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are learning to walk his way in our time and place. Through our daily work building community we choose to walk on paths of forgiveness and reconciling action, to build intercultural relationships among our members, and to collaborate with local not-for-profit organizations serving the social needs of our neighbourhood.

Worship, Discipleship, and Pastoral Care

Our worship services follow the Church Year, an annual calendar built around the life of Christ. The Church seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter (and more) are an educational tool that teach us how to live out our identity as baptised persons and to make Jesus’s faith our own. Parishioners, young and old, gather in different ways – weekly or seasonally – for learning based in scripture, the lives of holy people, and the needs of world. With the support of clergy, parishioners uphold one another with pastoral care visiting the sick, hosting neighbours, and accompanying one another through life’s joys and sorrows with prayer, hope, and acts of compassion.

Inuit Ministry

The Inuit congregation of St. Margaret’s is a strong and distinctive part of our parish ministry. The congregation gathers routinely to pray, plan, organize, and implement Inuit-led worship, hospitality, pastoral care, and service to the wider Inuit community in Ottawa. The congregation’s ministry is supported by the fulltime appointment of The Rev. Canon Aigah Attagutsiak.

Sunday Community Meal

The Sunday Community Meal is a key feature of our parish ministry. On most Sundays between September and June, parishioners organize the purchase, cooking, and serving of a nutritious meal. The meal is open to everyone – parishioners and neighbours looking for food, connection, and community. We staff each meal with a Community Host – a contractor with frontline social service experience who provides extra support and leadership to ensure the gathering is welcoming and hospitable for everyone. 

The Sunday Community Meal is a replication of God’s hospitality to us. In our Sunday worship God sets a table for us in our celebration of Holy Communion; with our Sunday Community Meal we set the table for one another and our neighbours to be God’s hospitality for each other.

Community Engagement

The parish engages the Vanier community in a variety of ways. Two examples are a monthly collection of donated goods for a local foodbank serving our neighbourhood (Partage Vanier), and the other is affordable rental agreements with community groups and not-for-profit organizations supporting our neighbours. St. Margaret’s has annual rental agreements with Minwaashin Lodge (operating a twice weekly drop-in for neighbours), a local chapter of Narcotics Anonymous (Jamais seule dans une nouvelle vie), and the Ottawa Finote Hiwot Medhanialem Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The parish is also frequently used for programming by Tungasuvvigat Inuit and Inuuqatigiit Centre for Children, Youth, and Families.