Canadian Archbishop Dies in Car Accident

by Marites N. Sison for Anglican Journal

Archbishop Edward "Ted" Scott, the 10th primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, died recently in a car accident near Parry Sound, Ont., two hours north of Toronto. He was 85.

Archbishop Scott was both praised and maligned when he served as primate of the Anglican Church of Canada for 15 years, spanning a period of social and political turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Globe and Mail reported that Archbishop Scott died after the car driven by his companion Sonja Bird rolled over and landed upside down in a metal culvert while they were traveling on Highway 69, about 18 kilometres south of Parry Sound. Ms. Bird was taken to the hospital with serious injuries.

Only a week before his death, Archbishop Scott had celebrated a eucharist at the chapel the national church office in Toronto, where church staff were preparing to move to a new building.

Although Archbishop Scott was the controversial "Red Primate" to those who disagreed with his many social justice causes, he was primarily a man who cared deeply about people to those who witnessed how he boldly challenged institutions, including his own church, to make a strong stand on issues such as apartheid in South Africa, native land claims in Canada's North, Third World debt relief and development, racism, the nuclear arms race, and the ordination of women to the priesthood.

His successor as primate, Archbishop Michael Peers, who retired in February, said his strongest impression of Ted Scott was of "a person determined to do as much of the Lord's work in 24 hours as could possibly be done." His legacy, the Archbishop said, would be felt not only within the Canadian church but far beyond.

"I was there when he was elected [at the meet ing of General Synod in 1971]" recalled Archbishop Peers. "We were looking for a person who would press the church in addressing the world in an incarnational way and that's been the way it's been ever since."

Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, who was elected primate last month, said a "remarkable number of people" will feel a personal sense of loss at Archbishop Scott's death, recalling that once, as a parish priest in the diocese of Toronto, he sent an invitation to Archbishop Scott to attend his parish's anniversary-with little hope that he would be able to attend.

"He telephoned and said he'd like to come for three days," said Archbishop Hutchison. Following the anniversary service and a community dinner, the primate and the then-priest toured the parish in Archbishop Hutchison's battered Volkswagen "visiting unsuspecting parishioners. Each one felt they made a personal connection with a human being; they did not simply meet a primate."

Born in Edmonton on April 30, 1919 to Kathleen Frances and Rev. Thomas Scott, an Anglican priest who later became bishop of the diocese of New Westminster, Ted Scott seemed destined to lead a life of activism. According to Canon Elspeth Alley in her biography of Archbishop Scott entitled Call Me Ted, "Ted would not accept a statement if he felt it should be challenged, and he loved to argue, bouncing ideas of all kinds off his father, especially those of a political or religious nature."

His family upbringing plus the fact that he grew up during the Depression had a lasting impact on him. "Ted became critical of the institutional church for failing to express real concern for the unemployment situation," wrote Ms. Alley. "He felt that the church was an uncaring institution."

After he finished his bachelor of arts degree in English and history in 1940. Ted Scott saw it as a way to translate his faith into action. His association with the Student Christian Movement, where he served as general secretary, had a profound impact him. "Quite frankly," he was once quoted, "I probably would not be in the church if it were not for SCM. It gave me the right to ask questions and to explore."

He became exposed to the plight of native people as a seminarian when he served on the Northern Cross, "the Anglican mission boat that ministered to small communities from Kitkatla in the south to the Alaska panhandle in the north," wrote Ms. Alley.

In 1942, a year after he was ordained deacon in Christ Church cathedral, Vancouver, Ted Scott married Isabel Florence Brannan. They would later have four children--Maureen, Douglas, Patricia and Jean. Isabel Scott died in September, 2000.

The first parish he served was St. Peter's, in Seal Cove, Prince Rupert; he then served as rector of the church of St. John the Baptist, and as rector of St. Jude's, Winnipeg. Later, he became director of social services and of Indian Work for the diocese of Rupert's Land. In 1966, he became the bishop of Kootenay in central British Columbia. The United Church Observer wrote of him in 1969, "He drove about 35,000 miles and spent almost 100 working days a year behind the wheel to visit his 32 ministers. 'I never make appointments; if a man is out, I chat with his wife-- they have problems too.'"

Five years later in 1971, he became the youngest bishop to be elected primate of the Anglican Church of Canada. He was 51. "When he left Kelowna for Niagara Falls, where he was elected, he'd promised his wife he wouldn't let his name stand. But God called," wrote Hugh McCullum in the Observer. (Mr. McCullum would later write a biography of Archbishop Scott, Radical Compassion, which was released by ABC Publishing last month.)

A man steeped in activism seemed the right choice for the turbulent times. June Callwood, a journalist and broadcaster, wrote, "A man less humble, less perceptive, less good, could never have guided the church, the country, and the world through such turbulence.His legacy, for me, is that he never wavered--however daunting the adversities he faced--from the path of honor."

Mr. McCullum echoes those sentiments: "When Ted Scott believes something he cannot waffle on it," he wrote. "It made him the butt of criticism from many quarters, including more than a few of his brother bishops."

In 1975 he was elected as moderator of the central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), a position he would serve for seven rough years. "In 1978 when the WCC granted money to the Popular Front in the Zimbabwe civil war, McCullum wrote, "he was crucified by the media, attacked by business interests in all churches, and severely questioned by the conservative elements of the Anglican church," Controversy also dogged him when he challenged the Church of England regarding its stand on the ordination of women. He said that its refusal to allow overseas women priests to officiate in England was causing a rift in the Anglican Communion. He told the Ontario Churchman in 1985: "One of the crucial issues of this age is whether or not we can create a church and a society where women are equal partners with men without having to become imaged by men."

Archbishop Scott also spoke out against the support of Western governments for military dictatorships overseas, against cruise missile testing and in favor of native and gay rights. He also became part of the Commonwealth's Eminent Persons Group, which worked towards a peaceful end to apartheid in South Africa. Jesus, he observed in the Anglican Messenger in 1986, "was involved in transforming the structures of the society of his day."

He declined invitations to join elite business clubs. "I felt I wanted to give every indication of the church's concern for people who cannot afford to belong to a club," he said.

When he ended his term in June 1986, his biggest disappointments, as he later said, were the failed union of the Anglican church with the United Church of Canada and racial segregation in South Africa.

His tenure made him "much more aware of the complexities of the kind of issues that we confront and the complexities that confront other people," he told the Toronto Star in an interview. "I've acquired a much greater sensitivity to the pressures that people live under." Asked about how he wanted people to remember him, he said, "I'd like to be remembered as somebody who helped the church develop a sense that human beings are important, that they counted and were taken seriously."

Retirement did not end Archbishop Scott's activism. He continued to campaign against apartheid in South Africa and was elated when it ended in 1994. He later worked with the South African Education Trust Fund and the International Defence and Aid for South Africa. He also served as a member of the Scott-McKayBain health panel that looked at health conditions among native populations in the Sioux Lookout Region of northwestern Ontario. He also became an advocate for the blessing of same-sex unions in the Anglican church, performing such a blessing at Toronto's Church of the Holy Trinity last September.

In his address to the Synod of the Diocese of Toronto in 2003, Archbishop Scott perhaps summed up his beliefs. He said, "There are two key questions which I believe we as Christian persons ought to ask ourselves: What kind of a person am I becoming? What kind of a world am I helping to come into being?"