Find a church in Orangeville

A town on a township line

The street that became Broadway was once the line between two townships, Mono to the north and Garafraxa to the south. Seneca Ketchum, a Toronto man and an Anglican lay preacher, began buying land on the Mono side in 1820 and settled there around 1830, and the log church he built on his own land in 1837 was the first St. Mark’s. The same year George Grigg bought land on the Garafraxa side for a mill, and a hamlet called Grigg’s Mill grew up around it. Around 1844 Orange Lawrence, a mill owner born in Connecticut, bought the Grigg’s Mill land, laid out the south-east part of what is now downtown, opened businesses and a school and became the first postmaster, and the place was named Orangeville after him. It was incorporated in 1863–64, became part of Dufferin County in 1874 and was named the county seat in 1881. The 2021 census counted 30,167 residents.

Broadway

In April 1875 the drill hall where council met burned down, and in May council chose to build a combined town hall and market in its place. Its upper floor became the Opera House, and the first group to rent the hall was the Primitive Methodists, for a concert so well attended that many could not find seats. Restored and reopened in 1993, the Opera House is now home to Theatre Orangeville. Since 2003 the town has turned dead trees along its boulevards into carved sculptures rather than cutting them down, and in 2015 the Canadian Institute of Planners named Broadway a Great Street of Canada.

Downtown

Several of the town’s oldest congregations still worship within a few minutes’ walk of Broadway. St. Mark’s Anglican, on First Avenue, dates itself to Seneca Ketchum’s log church of 1837; its present church was built in 1868 and its square tower in 1891. The spire of Westminster United has stood on Broadway since 1879. The church was built for Zion Presbyterian and became the home of St. Andrew’s when Orangeville’s two Presbyterian congregations united in 1880. When St. Andrew’s voted to join the United Church in 1925, the members who wished to remain Presbyterian worshipped for a year in the Gem Theatre on Broadway and then in a storefront, and in 1941 they opened Tweedsmuir Memorial Presbyterian Church on John Street, named with Lady Tweedsmuir’s permission after her husband, the Governor General, who had died the year before. Another picture house on Broadway, the Uptown Theatre, showed films from 1927 to 2002 and is now home to The Uptown Church, which serves a community lunch there on weekdays. Behind First Street, on Penny Lane, Calvary Baptist Church, an independent Baptist congregation, has met in a small hall since 2025.

Across the town

St. Timothy, the Catholic parish, has worshipped since 1969 in a church on Dawson Road whose triangular plan stands for the Trinity; before that its church was St. Peter’s on John Street, facing the railway station, from 1876. Two Reformed congregations were founded in 1950 by Dutch immigrants who came after the Second World War: Orangeville Christian Reformed Church, on Blind Line, and Orangeville Canadian Reformed Church, which has worshipped on C Line, on the west side of town, since 1960. Broadway Pentecostal Church, at the west end of Broadway, traces its beginnings to Pentecostal meetings held in an Orangeville home from 1924 and dedicated its present building in 1974. Centre Fellowship Church meets in The Centre, the building with a curved white tower that it opened on Hansen Boulevard in 2011, and The Salvation Army New Hope Community Church is on Riddell Road at the south end of town. The Church of Pentecost PIWC Orangeville, an assembly of a Pentecostal church with its roots in Ghana, meets in the old railway station building on Townline.

Visiting on a Sunday

St. Mark’s holds the earliest service, a said Eucharist at 8:30, and St. Timothy’s first Sunday Mass is at 9:00, after its Saturday vigil Mass at 5:00. The Canadian Reformed church gathers at 9:30. Most congregations begin at 10:00 or 10:30: St. Mark’s Choral Eucharist, the Christian Reformed church, Broadway Pentecostal, Centre Fellowship and PIWC Orangeville at 10:00, and Westminster United, Tweedsmuir, the Uptown Church, Calvary Baptist and New Hope at 10:30. St. Timothy’s second Mass is at 11:00. Two congregations meet again in the afternoon, Calvary Baptist at 1:00 and the Canadian Reformed church at 2:00, and the Uptown Church holds an evening service at 7:00. Westminster moves its service to 10:00 in July and August and Tweedsmuir holds a relaxed Café Church through the summer, so check the church’s own page before you go.