100-year-old downtown Oshawa church vandalized

An iconic downtown Oshawa church celebrating its centennial this year was broken into sometime last night, with broken glass at the entrance and a ransacked kitchen evidence of the vandalism.

It is unknown if anything was stolen.

Photo Joan Mansfield

Neither St. George Memorial, an Anglican church built in 1924 at the corner of Centre Street and Bagot Street (with a history in the city going back to 1847), or Durham Regional Police have made any statements on the break-in yet.

St. George (Anglican) was built in the traditional English Gothic style in 1924 – the same year Oshawa was incorporated as a ‘city’ – after two earlier versions at Park Road and King Street (1847) and a couple of blocks south of its current location on what is now Memorial Park (1858).

The church holds a special place in the city’s heart and many of the city’s most famous figures have been honoured there, such as long-time mayor Nancy Diamond, whose life was celebrated at St. George in 2017.