Moving forward with a plan nearly 40 years in the making, the diocese of the Arctic has announced the formation of a body tasked with redeveloping buildings on church-owned land into housing and multiuse community centres.
The diocesan executive committee describes the goals of the Arctic Anglican Development Corporation (AADC) as improving availability of housing, working towards stabilizing rents and increasing housing affordability across Northern Canada; and providing resources for investment in Arctic mission and ministry.
Formation of the AADC as a separate corporation was necessary for the diocese to comply with rules set by the Canada Revenue Agency for charities involved in housing projects. The AADC will begin its work in Nunavut and expand over time into Nunavik and the Northwest Territories.
Executive Archdeacon Alexander Pryor says discussions on forming such a corporation have come up at the diocesan executive and synods for decades, but that the main impetus for launching the AADC came from changes to how General Synod funds the Council of the North. In 2023, General Synod began to reduce Council of the North funding by $100,000 annually, until its annual block grant is equal to 25 per cent of donations the national church receives through proportional giving from dioceses.
When the diocese was building new churches in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Pryor says, it was aware there was a need in communities for meeting space. Anglicans were also concerned about how to best use their buildings in a sustainable way, given the high cost in the North of heating spaces the church might only use for a few hours a week.
“The change in the funding for the Council of the North has made it so clear that now is the time to go forward with developing the land that we have across the North to make our churches more sustainable, so that we’re not spending as much on utilities and maintenance for standalone church buildings when communities really have a need for office space and community hall space—and especially for housing, because we’ve got a housing crisis right across the North,” Pryor says.
When many northern communities were being formed in the 1950s and 1960s—much of the Arctic population beforehand had lived primarily nomadic lives—the church was given land right at the centre of the communities, Pryor notes.
In most places they built a small church on a large plot of land. That land, he says, is now “perfect to develop into a multipurpose building that can provide housing for the communities that is desperately needed.”
The diocese has several projects in the works on land where there is currently a church or vacant space to replace old buildings with new multi-story buildings, Pryor says. The main floor would serve as a space serving many purposes, including worship.
“On Sundays it’s the church,” Pryor says. “Throughout the week, it can be used for community groups, for afterschool clubs.” A daycare society in one community has already expressed interest in using this space, he says.
Remaining floors above would consist of affordable housing units, including one to serve as mission housing for a minister and their family. The AADC will collect rents from these units and maintain the buildings, with proceeds going back to the diocese every year.
Currently the AADC is looking to secure funding to help support these projects. One potential source is the Nunavut 3000 project, also known as Igluliuqatigiingniq (“Building Houses Together”). A joint initiative by the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Housing Corporation largely funded by the federal government, Nunavut 3000 aims to build 3,000 new housing units across Nunavut by 2030.
The AADC has three projects on its radar for the near future, Pryor says. One in Apex, a small community outside of Iqaluit, is closest to breaking ground. The AADC has drawn up plans to replace an Anglican church built there in the 1940s, which now has a severe mould problem, with a multi-purpose church and hall and 12 housing units.
A second project is at a building built in the 1930s in the Inuit hamlet of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, that was the former site of the Arthur Turner Training School until the structure was condemned in 2002. The building is currently being demolished and the AADC will partner with the hamlet to develop a new structure that includes 18 housing units. The third project is in the hamlet of Baker Lake at the former site of a church that was demolished, where the AADC is looking to build a new three or four-level structure.
