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Bishop's retirement beginning of the end for Cariboo

Leanne Larmondin
Web Manager

Kamloops, B.C.
Bishop Jim Cruickshank of Cariboo has officially announced his resignation
by year's end, one of a series of events that will see the diocese's
affairs brought to a close by Dec. 31.

Bishop Cruickshank's announcement came in a letter addressed to Archbishop
David Crawley, metropolitan of the ecclesiastical (church) province of
British Columbia and Yukon. Archbishop Crawley, who also heads the diocese
of Kootenay, will now have oversight of parishes in what will soon become
known as the "former diocese of Cariboo".

With slightly more than 4,700 Anglicans, the mostly rural diocese of
Cariboo in the interior of British Columbia is one of Canada's smallest.

Litigation over residential schools, including a devastating 1999 court
ruling finding it jointly liable (with the national church) for 60 per cent
of an undisclosed award to a man abused at a Lytton, B.C., residential
school, has plundered the diocese's assets. The Lytton ruling is being
appealed, Bishop Cruickshank noted in a pastoral letter to the diocese, and
the diocese will remain a legal entity for that reason.

Bishop Cruickshank could not be reached for comment.

The diocesan executive committee, meeting in mid-September, is handing over
administrative, program and pastoral oversight for Cariboo parishes to
Archbishop Crawley. All diocesan archives will also be turned over to the
ecclesiastical province.

The Dec. 31 deadline for wrapping up diocesan affairs is actually two and a
half months later than the diocese expected. Bishop Cruickshank, who
announced at General Synod in July that Cariboo would cease to operate as
of October 15, said in a recent interview with the Anglican Journal that
there was too much work involved in winding up the diocese's affairs by
that deadline.

Diocesan officials also hoped that negotiations with the federal government
would prevent the diocese from going under. The diocese had proposed to
Ottawa that it enter into an alternative dispute resolution regarding the
diocese's assets (since Ottawa paid the settlement, the diocese is now a
creditor of the government), but the government did not respond according
to Bishop Cruickshank's pastoral letter.

The letter, to be read in all churches in the diocese in the last two weeks
of September, noted that the diocese's decisions, while difficult, were
made "to ensure that our ministry continues in a vital and healthy way".

Consecrated Bishop of Cariboo in 1992, Bishop Cruickshank was ordained a
priest in 1963 and began his ministry as vicar of Cariboo's Upper Fraser
Mission. In 1965, he became the first director of the Sorrento Lay Training
Centre in Sorrento, B.C. He later served for 10 years as professor of
pastoral theology at the Vancouver School of Theology. He was dean and
rector of Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, in the diocese of New
Westminster from 1983 until his election as bishop. In 1993, he offered his
personal and diocese's apologies to native people for the harm done them by
the church. He turned 65 this year.
- 30 -

Links:

Synod defers motion to quit negotiations
-- Anglican Journal news story, General Synod 2001 edition
<http://www.anglicanjournal.com/127/07/synod03.html>

Cariboo 'toast,' synod is told
-- Anglican Journal news story, November 2000
<http://www.anglicanjournal.com/126/09/canada01.html>

Diocese of Cariboo plans own shutdown
-- Anglican Journal news story, September 2000
<http://www.anglicanjournal.com/126/07/canada05.html>

Pioneering spirit drives diocese on
-- Anglican Journal diocesan profile, April 1999
<http://www.anglicanjournal.com/125/04/prov05.html>

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Leanne Larmondin
Web Manager
Anglican Church of Canada
600 Jarvis St.
Toronto ON  L5E 2G1
(416) 924 9199 ext. 307
ll@anglican.ca
http://www.anglican.ca
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