Summer Outreach Chaplain

Michael grew up in Toronto, in the Yonge and Lawrence area. He attended Little Trinity Anglican Church, in the Distillery District where he made some lifelong friendships and a lifelong commitment to Liverpool Football Club. He went to Mount Alison University in New Brunswick to study Business, but switched to International Relations during the first week and neglected to tell his parents till he got home for Christmas. Students of International Relations need to be bilingual and so upon completing his degree in 2007, he moved to the champagne region of France to get a little extra practice in. He stayed two years in the medieval city of Troyes working as an English Language Assistant with high school students. While living in Troyes he discovered the ecumenical monastic community of Taizé and moved there in the autumn of 2009. He lived in Taizé until the summer of 2011 but he was also sent by the community to help with the preparation of Taizé meetings in Norway and the Netherlands. In Taizé, he discovered a sense of vocation in working towards reconciling the Church and the human family. He and his wife, Yvonne, met in Teachers' College in Ottawa and were married in the summer of 2013. After having worked in the Halton region as teachers, they embarked on a one year bicycle adventure that brought them to Europe, South East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. After many kilometres and much reflection both he and his wife decided to take new directions and subsequently applied to a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of Urban planning respectively. Michael began studying theology at Trinity College and has made many friends, read many books, and written many papers. He has just completed his second year and a full-time internship at St. Nicholas-Birch Cliff. He is on ordination track in the diocese of Toronto and is delighted to have the opportunity to work in the York-Simcoe area of this vast diocese over the summer in the Community of Georgina and at Sibbald Point Provincial Park. He is looking forward to spending the next months worshiping at St. George’s, sipping coffee with park visitors on his campsite #907, and enjoying his passions of cycling, photography, building new relationships and reflecting the incarnational presence of God through his ministry of presence.