Perley Memorial United Church
This congregation formally disbanded on December 14, 2018, with the approval of Kootenay Presbytery.
We worship together at St. John’s United Church
Sundays in Grand Forks at 10:00 a.m.
A Bit of History
Source: Church in the Kootenays: The Story of The United Church of Canada in Kootenay Presbytery — Elsie G. Turnbull, Published for Kootenay Presbytery United Church Women by Trail Times Limited, 1965
For forty years Eholt, Phoenix, Mother Lode and Cascade City have belonged to the past, their mines closed down, their buildings obliterated. The Granby Company and the Dominion Copper Company closed their smelters and mines about 1920 and Phoenix became a ghost town. Dead-wood Camp has vanished completely and the Mother Lode, although re-opened briefly in 1957 has since shut down. Boundary Falls is today only a sawmill operation which covers the slag dump of the old smelter. Cascade Presbyterian church was sold in 1940 for the sum of twenty-five dollars and the land surrounding it which once comprised Cascade City is now a golf club.
However in the spring of 1965 a congregation was constituted at Christina Lake by representatives of Kootenay Presbytery. Replacing the old Cascade Presbyterian church it is served by Rev. Glen Betts of Grand Forks who holds services in the community hall, ministering to workers of the local sawmill and to the host of summer residents along the lakeshore. Given the name, Perley Memorial United Church, it commemorates a former pastor whose work in the Kootenays spanned many years. Rev. D. M. Perley served as a missionary in Phoenix and Moyie, as minister in Fernie during the war years and later in Grand Forks and East Trail – Fruitvale.
Due to declining membership, in 2017 the congregation decided to worship with St. John’s United in Grand Forks. The congregation formally disbanded on December 14, 2018, with the approval of Kootenay Presbytery.