OwenSound.church Churches across Owen Sound, Ontario
The harbour at Owen Sound, with the concrete grain elevator standing over the water at the head of the bay
Photo: Hannah Clover, CC BY 4.0

Find a church in Owen Sound

Service times, addresses and a plain description of what each congregation believes, for churches across the city.

21 congregations across 16 denominations in Owen Sound.

Sunday at a glance

Weekly Sunday morning and afternoon services, from each church's own website. Evening services are on each church's own page. Holiday and summer schedules can differ.

Churches in Owen Sound

All 21 churches

Roman Catholic

St. Mary of the Assumption

554 15th Street East

Sundays 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.; Mondays 9:00 a.m.; Tuesdays 7:00 p.m.; Wednesday to Friday 9:00 a.m.; Saturdays 5:00 p.m.

See all 21 churches

Church life in Owen Sound

Four limestone churches stand on the four corners of 10th Street and 4th Avenue East, on the block Owen Sound has long called Salvation Corners, and they are only the middle of the story. A Black Methodist congregation has met on 11th Street West since 1856, the parishes climbed the hills as the harbour town grew, and newer churches gather out along the west side and south of the river. This guide lists a growing number of them so you can find a service this Sunday.

A harbour under the escarpment

Owen Sound sits at the head of a long inlet of Georgian Bay, where the Pottawatomi and Sydenham rivers come down through a valley the Niagara Escarpment cut into limestone. The survey was laid out in 1840 and the place was called Sydenham until 1851, when it took the name of the sound; it was incorporated as a town in 1857. For most of a century it was a working port, the Great Lakes terminus of the railway and a grain harbour, and the elevator still stands over the water at the foot of the hill. The 2021 census counted 21,612 residents.

The city was also a northern terminus of the Underground Railroad. Freedom seekers reached the head of the bay from the 1840s, and the community they built is commemorated by the Black History Cairn in Harrison Park and by the Emancipation Picnic, held every August since 1862 and the longest-running celebration of its kind in Canada.

Salvation Corners

Four churches of the local limestone stand on the four corners of 10th Street and 4th Avenue East, a crossing Owen Sound has long called Salvation Corners; the four hotels on the corners of 10th and 3rd, a block west, were Damnation Corners.

  • St. George’s Anglican Church opened in 1881, its tower carrying a steeple of about 142 feet, and was modelled on an English parish church. It belongs to the Diocese of Huron and its Deanery of the Saugeens.
  • Georgian Shores United Church worships in the Gothic Revival church built in 1886 for the Division Street Presbyterian congregation. The present congregation was formed in 2012, when Division Street United and Knox United amalgamated; Knox’s old building on the next block is now the Harmony Centre.
  • First Baptist Church has stood on the corner since 1903, an Italianate building with semi-elliptical windows.
  • Owen Sound Church of the Nazarene meets in the smallest of the four, a church built for the Disciples of Christ and bought by the Nazarene congregation in 1956.

Across the city

Away from that corner the churches spread out with the town. St. Mary of the Assumption, the Catholic parish, has worshipped in its 1870 church on 15th Street East since before the railway came, and is the mother church of a parish that reaches as far as Tobermory. The BME Church of Owen Sound has met on 11th Street West since 1911, in a building bought from the Westside Methodists for a dollar; the congregation itself dates from 1856, and the church was designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1987.

St. Andrew’s Presbyterian is on 2nd Avenue West, Central Westside United on 10th Street West in the old Westside Methodist church, and the Lutheran Church of Our Saviour on 4th Avenue West, on land the congregation bought in 1963. The United Church has a third congregation here, First United, out on 21st Street West. Further out are Owen Sound First Christian Reformed, Rockcliffe Pentecostal, Owen Sound Alliance, Calvary Evangelical Missionary, the Salvation Army’s community church, Owen Sound Gospel Hall, a Church of Christ on 10th Avenue East and Southend Fellowship Baptist at the south end of 2nd Avenue. Trinity Church meets in the gymnasium of Timothy Christian School on the far side of the river. Two congregations sit just beyond the city limits but belong to the town by name and by post: Crossroads Victory Church on 19th Street West, and the Owen Sound Canadian Reformed Church, which gathers twice each Sunday in the country to the west, off Grey Road 18.

Visiting on a Sunday

The four churches at Salvation Corners are within sight of one another, and most of the downtown congregations are a short walk from the river; parking on the street is free. Service times run from 8:00 at St. George’s, through a thick cluster between 9:00 and 11:00 right across the city, to the Canadian Reformed afternoon service at 2:30; the Gospel Hall and the Church of Christ also meet again in the evening. Anyone visiting more than one church on the same morning will find the east-side pair on 4th Avenue East the easiest to manage.

By denomination

What each tradition believes, and where to find it in Owen Sound.

  • Reformed churches 2 congregations

    Reformed churches are Protestant churches in the tradition of John Calvin and the Dutch Reformation, confessing the Three Forms of Unity. In Ontario the name covers four related federations with a shared Dutch heritage and distinct histories.

  • Roman Catholic churches 1 congregation

    Roman Catholics belong to the worldwide church led by the Pope in Rome, gathered each Sunday around the Mass, where they believe Christ himself is truly present in the bread and wine. In Wellington County, Catholic parishes belong to the Diocese of Hamilton.

  • Anglican churches 1 congregation

    Anglicans belong to the Anglican Church of Canada, part of the worldwide Anglican Communion that grew out of the Church of England. They hold the faith of the creeds, worship from the Book of Common Prayer or the Book of Alternative Services, and are led by bishops; local parishes belong to the Diocese of Niagara.

  • United churches 3 congregations

    The United Church of Canada was formed in 1925 when Methodist, Congregational and most Presbyterian congregations joined together. It is Canada's largest Protestant denomination, known for an open communion table, a wide theological welcome and a strong emphasis on social justice.

  • Methodist churches 1 congregation

    Methodism began as a renewal movement inside the Church of England under John and Charles Wesley in the 1730s, and grew into the largest Protestant body in nineteenth-century Canada. Most Canadian Methodists entered the United Church in 1925; the congregations still called Methodist today are chiefly those that did not.

  • Presbyterian churches 1 congregation

    Presbyterians belong to the Presbyterian Church in Canada, a Reformed church with Scottish roots, governed by elders and guided by the Westminster Confession and the modern statement Living Faith. Its stone churches are among the oldest congregations in Wellington County.

  • Lutheran churches 1 congregation

    Lutherans follow the teaching of Martin Luther as set out in the Augsburg Confession and the Small Catechism, centred on justification by grace through faith and on Christ's presence in baptism and Holy Communion. Canada has two Lutheran churches: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and Lutheran Church–Canada.

  • Baptist churches 2 congregations

    Baptists are evangelical Christians known for baptizing only those old enough to profess their own faith, and for the independence of each local congregation. In Ontario most Baptist churches belong either to the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec or to the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches.

  • Pentecostal churches 2 congregations

    Pentecostals are evangelical Christians who emphasize the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit such as speaking in tongues and healing, and lively, expressive worship. Most Pentecostal churches in Wellington County belong to the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada.

  • Non-denominational churches 1 congregation

    Non-denominational churches are independent congregations that belong to no denomination and answer to their own leadership. Most are evangelical in belief, contemporary in style, and go by names like community church, Bible church or Christian fellowship.

  • Evangelical churches 1 congregation

    Evangelical churches in this group belong to smaller Canadian denominations — Free Methodist, Wesleyan, Evangelical Missionary, Associated Gospel, Evangelical Free, Vineyard and others — that share a gospel-centred, Bible-believing faith and a heart for mission, while differing in history and emphasis.

  • Alliance churches 1 congregation

    Alliance churches belong to the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, an evangelical denomination founded for world mission and known for its Fourfold Gospel: Jesus Christ as Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King.

  • Brethren assemblies and Bible chapels 1 congregation

    Brethren assemblies and Bible chapels are independent evangelical congregations from the nineteenth-century Plymouth Brethren movement, marked by a weekly breaking of bread and leadership by elders rather than clergy; the separate Brethren in Christ come from Anabaptist and Wesleyan roots.

  • Salvation Army churches 1 congregation

    The Salvation Army is an evangelical Protestant church in the Wesleyan-holiness tradition, founded in London in 1865, whose congregations are called corps, whose ministers are officers, and whose worship goes hand in hand with social service.

  • Nazarene churches 1 congregation

    The Church of the Nazarene is a Wesleyan-holiness denomination, formed in the United States in 1908 out of several holiness missions and churches, which teaches that a believer may be entirely sanctified by a second work of grace after conversion.

  • Restorationist churches 1 congregation

    The Churches of Christ are autonomous congregations of the nineteenth-century Restoration Movement, which set out to leave creeds and denominations behind and restore the church described in the New Testament. Most sing without instruments and break bread every Lord's Day.

Reading

All articles

What do Reformed Christians believe?

Plain-language summary of Reformed belief: grace, the Bible, covenant, the Three Forms of Unity, sacraments, church life and common misunderstandings.

, 6 min read

Looking in a nearby town?

Sister sites list the churches there too.