Salt you say?

Servants - Ambassadors - Leaders - Teachers

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Servants - Ambassadors - Leaders - Teachers
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"For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good;
but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it?
Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."

Mark 9:50

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At one time Toronto was known as "Toronto the good". In those days (roughly from the 1880s until 1950) the buildings that towered over the city were alike churches. St. James Cathedral, Anglican; St. Michael's Cathedral, Roman Catholic; Metropolitan Church, Methodist. Huge structures all, they rose up above everything else in the city and dominated it. Not only did church buildings dominate the city, so did church leaders. No city politician dared defy church leaders. No public servant or board of education official would say or do anything that simply flew in the face of the church's convictions. Back in the days of "Toronto the good" a clergyman (Rev. Maurice Cody) was even president of the University of Toronto, Canada’s most prestigious educational institution.
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What buildings dominate Toronto's skyline now? What buildings tower over the city now? BANKS! They are all banks! Toronto Dominion was the first superstructure, followed by the Bank of Montreal, the Commerce Bank, The Royal Bank, the Bank of Nova Scotia, and Canada Trust.
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Clearly, it's the pursuit of money and the handling of money and the magnification of money that characterises the city now. Compared to the bank buildings the cathedral churches look like tinker-toys, the playthings of children. And compared to the pursuit of money and the handling of money and the magnification of money (what the banks are about), what the churches are about looks like – does anyone know or care what the churches are about?
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William Howland was salt. He possessed a bubbly enthusiasm and phenomenal capacity for hard work. By the age he was 25, William Howland was president, vice-president, or a director of more than a dozen companies in the fields of insurance and finance, electrical services, and paint manufacturing. When he became president of the Queen City Fire Insurance Company in 1871, he was the youngest insurance company president in Canada. As well, Howland was President of three influential organizations: the Toronto Board of Trade, the Dominion Board of Trade, and the Manufacturer’s Association of Ontario. Out of his love for his country, he served as Chairman of the Canada First movement, personally financing its weekly newspaper "The Nation".
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At age 32, William Howland was led to Christ by his priest, Dr. W.S. Rainsford of St. James Anglican Cathedral. His life-changing experience gave him a new passion for helping the poor. He became involved helping with the Hillcrest Convalescent Hospital, the YMCA, the Haven Home for Unwed Mothers, the Prisoner’s Aid Association, the Central Prison Mission School, and the Toronto General Hospital. Night after night, Howland visited the slums, going from house-to-house, and reaching out to the poor, the sick, and the alcoholic. He also purchased 50 acres to start an Industrial School in order to steer youth away from the life of crime.
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Other initiatives were his building an alternative school for drop-outs, and a Home for the Aged and Homeless Poor. When he began to teach an interdenominational bible study for 100 young men, his new priest J.P. Lewis objected to Howland’s involvement with non-Anglicans. Out of this rejection, he began the interdenominational Toronto Mission Union, which operated seniors’ homes, convalescent homes, and Toronto’s first-ever home nursing service.
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Because of his great compassion for the poor, he was elected as Mayor of Toronto in 1885, with a strong mandate to clean up the city. Howland signaled his arrival in the mayor’s office by installing a twelve-foot banner on the wall, reading, "Except the Lord Build the City, the Watchman Wakes but in Vain".
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Despite fierce opposition, Howland was so successful, that Toronto became nicknamed "Toronto the Good". As champion of the poor, Howland and his Alliance friend, Rev. John Salmon, would tramp the lanes and alleys, feeding the poor, praying over the sick, and comforting the sad. With a population of just 104,000, Toronto had over 800 licensed and unlicensed saloons. Over half of all criminal offenses recorded in 1885 were related to drunkenness.
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Howland is described in Desmond Morton’s book "Mayor Howland: the Citizen’s Candidate" as the first reform mayor in Toronto’s history. Due to bureaucratic corruption, municipal garbage collection was all but non-existent. Even City Hall’s own garbage was rarely picked up. Rotting garbage fouled the alleyways, yards, and streets, giving Toronto a reputation for flies, stench, and disease. With no general sewage system, Toronto lived on the verge of a typhoid epidemic. Children swam in the same Toronto harbour area into which raw sewage was flowing from the ditches. Toronto’s fresh water supply was sucked through leaking and rotting wooden pipes, half buried in the sewage and sludge of the Toronto harbour.
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Howland believed that we didn’t usually need more laws; we just needed to enforce the ones that already existed. He shocked the city bureaucrats by enforcing the already existing bylaw which forbid the depositing of garbage within the city limits. After he threatened to send the city commissioner to jail for breaking this bylaw, garbage miraculously began to be collected!
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William Howland died unexpectedly at age 49. With more than a thousand mourners on foot from all social classes, it was the largest funeral procession that had ever been held in Toronto.
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A poem published in the Toronto Globe said of Howland:
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"And not Toronto mourns alone;
All Canada his fame had heard;
His name is dear, a household word,
And far and wide, his worth was known".
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May William H. Howland continue to be a living symbol of the difference that just one Canadian can make. He understood what Jesus meant when He said that we are to be salt. Salt preserves food and brings out the flavour within food.
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We are to be the flavour of God - no matter where we may find ourselves.
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Our Words, our actions, can flavour conversations and events,
we are to be salt - in a world full of vinegar.
Servants - Ambassadors, Leaders and Teachers of and for Jesus Christ.