Trudy Sailors still remembers the day a bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada told her that her parish would have to move out of its beloved church. Growing up next to St. Thomas’ Anglican Church in the 1960s, Sailors saw firsthand the important role it played as a gathering place in the community.

Consecrated in 1864, St. Thomas’ Anglican served generations of worshippers in the Moose Cree First Nation community in Moose Factory, near James Bay in northern Ontario. But by 2006, the building had fallen into disrepair, prompting the Anglican diocese of Moosonee to order its deconsecration and closure. “It was sad,” remembers Sailors, who was baptized in what came to be known as Old St. Thomas. Since then, Sailors says the Anglican congregation has moved into a nearby Catholic church.

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Moose Factory was founded on traditional Cree lands as an early trading post of the........

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