The Review.ca Wednesday, April 13, 2011 15

Thieves cut the wooden moulding around the stained glass windows at St. Columba Presbyterian Church to remove the windows. All that is left are these top pieces of each panel. PHOTO LOUISE SPROULE

Thieves sliced around the wooden frames holding four stained glass panels in place. Seen here are the tops to two of the panels. One of the four panels (the one seen above, at right) was left behind and some say that perhaps the thieves were frightened off and had to leave in a hurry. PHOTO LOUISE SPROULE

<< 1.Church member Doreen Howes expressed

feelings that were voiced by many on Sunday.“If you had been there at the start of the church

service, it was as if we were at a funeral. It was like there had been a death in our church,” Howes said. “For so many of us, we were baptized there, married there and expect that our funerals will be there. I felt this way when our home was bro-

ken into. For so many of us, this church is like our home and we feel invaded. There is so much his-tory… we are very rooted here.”

Other church members voiced similar senti-ments. “I was born here and I will be funeraled here too probably,” said George MacLeod, say-ing that it was hard to accept that someone would break into the church.

Eighty-year-old R.D. MacLeod has attended St. Columba Presbyterian Church for all of his life. “I didn’t even want to come to church this morning,” he said. “We are just devastated.”

Minister Apps-Douglas said that she ad-dressed the loss during the Sunday morning serv-ice: “I told them they have the right to be angry and to be upset. This is their house and it was an invasion. Something has been taken from them. This is a place where we come to celebrate and to mourn. It is a safe place. But someone came here to do damage. It is very upsetting to us all.”

This is the third such theft in the region. Re-cently, stained glass windows at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Grenville, Quebec, were sto-len. A large stained glass window was also sto-len from St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Duna-ny, Quebec.

St. Columba’s Presbyterian Church was built in 864, but the congregation dates back to 89 and a previous, older church.

“Everyone is quite sad,” MacMillan said. “These windows are irreplaceable.”

Theft leaves congregation devastated

Members of the St. Columba congregation stand in front of a bright bare window where only a few days before, the stained glass panels had normally filtered the light coming in to the church. Older church members say that they felt the loss deeply on Sunday morning. “I have been looking at those panels in those windows for years,” said one long-time church member. Visit The Review’s website to hear what church members said on Sunday. PHOTO LOUISE SPROULE

L’ORIGNAL – The Pres-cott-Russell ARTour Committee is encour-ageing young people who are talented in visual arts, to participate in the Young Artist Contest.

Three $500 scholar-ships will be offered to talented students. All Prescott-Russell Grade 2 students register-ing next September in a full-time program in visual arts, photography, graphic, or media arts, at the post-secondary level (college or university) are eligible to participate.

The candidates must present five original works of art in the medi-um of their choice: draw-ing, painting, sculpture, photography or any oth-er form of visual or me-dia arts. Details of the Young Artists Scholar-ships are available www.artour.ca.

The deadline for ap-plications is Friday, April 29. Winning artists will have the opportunity to be placed with a partici-pating professional artist in order to exhibit his or her works of art during the ARTour 20 week-end, on September 24 and 25.

For more informa-tion, contact Jeanne Doucet at 63-673-599 or 63-85-990, or jdoucet@uottawa.ca.

Art bursaries