Area Bishop installed for Trent-Durham

On Saturday, 21 January at 2 pm, The Right Reverend Riscylla Shaw was installed at St John’s Peterborough as the new Bishop of the Trent-Durham Episcopal Area. The church was packed full with clergy from the area and members of parishes to give a warm welcome for the new area bishop.

The Trent-Durham episcopal area has 43 parishes and 61 churches in small towns, rural communities, and rapidly growing urban areas along the Ontario lakeshore. It is the largest geographical area of the Diocese of Toronto, stretching from Pickering to Brighton and from Lake Ontario to Haliburton.

Bishop Riscylla was elected on the seventh ballot of the first series of the episcopal elections last fall (photo above). She is 44 years of age and has been serving as the incumbent of Christ Church, Bolton. She earned a Master of Divinity from Wycliffe College in 1999 and was ordained deacon in 2001 and priest the same year. Bishop V and her husband, Jana, have two children.

“This is a real gift from the diocese and from the Spirit, and I feel very blessed and humbled,” she said after her Consecration as Bishop on 7 January. “I really look forward to being with the people and being a leader amongst them.”

Bishop Walsh Shaw is Métis and serves as an Ambassador of Reconciliation in the diocese.

“It’s a real honour and blessing to be [our Ambassador for Reconciliation and] part of the leadership, bringing that culture and point of view with me. At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, I learned a lot and made a lot of connections with the people across the land, so this is a really wonderful opportunity to find different ways to address some of the issues of reconciliation that we have in our diocese, and also to raise the culture of Métis.”

Bishop Riscylla added: “I think this is a time of great hope and I’m really excited. It’s an historic time for the diocese and the culture is changing – it’s a new day for the church… .”

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