The Trimble Years [1]

George Trimble knew from an early age he wanted to be a minister.

“When Rev. Dr. George E. Trimble was a little boy in the village of Erin, near Guelph, he would slip into the Methodist church after Sunday school and put a stool behind the pulpit,” begins a 1958 story about Fairlawn in the Toronto Telegram.

“Standing on the stool, hardly able to see over the top of the pulpit, he would pretend to preach to the congregation of one — his mother, a teacher in the Sunday school.”

From that time, Trimble knew he wanted to be a minister. And that’s exactly what happened — he went on to become Fairlawn’s longest-serving minister, from 1942 to 1960.

Trimble had plenty of ministry experience when he came to Fairlawn. In addition to preaching at Methodist and Presbyterian churches in western Canada, and charges in Delhi, Hamilton and London, he also spent three years as a teacher. As a student minister, he made the trek up Yonge Street to preach one Sunday at Bedford Park Methodist’s little white frame church on Fairlawn Avenue, little realizing he would be back several decades later to take up duties in the current brick building.

His first years at Fairlawn were trying. The war in Europe had escalated and Canadian soldiers were dying. There were 11 young men from Fairlawn who died in the conflict: Hugh Grant, Peter Fleming, William Roberts, Ernest Cannon, Harold Wright, James White, George Molesworth, Kenneth Miller, Donald Standfield, Jack Stewart and Henry Crowther.

When the war ended, Trimble found himself presiding over a bustling congregation that was experiencing the same post-war explosion in growth as most other churches. Hundreds of people were joining the congregation each year. By 1958, Fairlawn had 2,000 members and 700 children in the Sunday school. Trimble estimates he had accepted about 2,500 into membership over that period.

Trimble spent 18 years at Fairlawn, longer than any other minister in the past 100 years.

It was becoming more difficult for the building to handle the growth. The last expansion of the church was in 1934 when the numbers were much smaller. As Fairlawn entered the 1950s, plans were approved to build two wings at the back of the property — a large west wing with Sunday school space and a gym, and the smaller east wing with church offices and meeting rooms. For most of 1951, services were held at the Park movie theatre on Yonge Street (now PJ’s Pets). As a community gesture, the theatre offered the space rent free.

Helping Trimble address the increasing spiritual demands at Fairlawn were a series of part-time and retired ministers, including Rev. Charles Marshall (who was back, having served as an assistant in 1939-1940), Rev. E.G. Ross, Rev. R.A. Whattam, and Rev. G.N. Maxwell. In 1958, the church hired a full-time assistant to help Trimble cope with the large numbers: Rev. Wesley Cope.

Gary Schlee