Christ Church
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New Christ Church – St. James was Toronto’s oldest British Methodist Episcopal church, founded by Black slaves who escaped to Canada by the Underground Railroad. This building was constructed in 1924.
It burned down in an arson on April 16, 1998. The main suspect was a medical technician at U of T and the church’s Sunday school teacher, Steven Toussaint who worked at the Faculty of Medicine’s anatomy laboratory. He and his colleague, Bob Ivens, went missing just before a string of arsons took place across Toronto. Ivens was found dead in the university morgue later that day.
Toussaint himself was found rotting more than a year later on July 21 1999 at the Scarborough Bluffs. The church site is now home to a row of low-rise condos.
Punlished in 2006.