The first resident clergyman of Comox District will be getting a new marker placed at St. Andrews Anglican Cemetery, where he was buried in 1935.
The Rev. Jules Xavier Willemar was born in France in 1842, and immigrated to Canada in 1867. He arrived in the Comox Valley in 1871 as a missionary to the First Nations people.
Originally a Roman Catholic priest, he later joined the Anglican church and was instrumental in the building of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church.
For 42 years, until his retirement in 1913, he ministered to the area working out of St. Andrew’s Comox District Church and providing services at Courtenay, Comox (formerly Steamboat’s Landing) and Cumberland (formerly Union). He is credited with having a major impact on the religious and social development of the Comox Valley. Please join the family on March 2 at 2 p.m. at St. Andrews Cemetery (behind the church at Dingwall Road and Highway 19A) to pay tribute to one of our pioneers.