Sometime around 1880, several members of the Presbyterian Church in Canada formed an organisation called The Toronto Presbyterian Church Defence Committee. Its 1881 declaration of principles lists among its concerns the introduction of musical instruments, non-scriptural hymns, choirs, and the practice of sitting to pray to public worship.
In 1880, trouble arose in Cooke’s Church, Toronto, a congregation of people from the north of Ireland. A small group of protesters physically removed the organ from the basement choir room. As a result of their action, not only were they suspended from the Sacraments by the Session, but the local magistrate imposed on them a penalty of a $50 fine or 20 days in gaol. This led to a division in the congregation; and those sympathetic to the protesters were formed into the Carleton Street Presbyterian Church within the Toronto Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
For five months around the turn of 1881, the congregation had supply from a licentiate of the New Light Reformed Presbyterians named David Murdock. However, after his departure, things declined until, in March 1886, the congregation was formally dissolved by the Presbytery and the church property was sold to some of the congregation who began looking for another denomination with which to affiliate. They approached the Rev. Nevin Woodside who, in 1880, had left the New Light Reformed Presbyterians over a disputed call to a congregation in Pittsburgh and then, in 1883, had formed a presbytery with another minister. On the 3rd of August 1886, the Toronto group was constituted as the First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Toronto and the presbytery became the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh and Ontario.
The Rev. David Mann was with the Toronto congregation for a year, followed by Rev. Andrew Thomas who stayed for about the same length of time. Its next minister, the Rev. Stuart Acheson, came in 1889 and was with them until 1894.
During his time in Toronto, Acheson met, in 1891, with a few families from Teeswater, in Midwestern Ontario, who had left the Presbyterian Church in Canada over the introduction of hymns and organs. These families were joined by William Elliot from Chesley who had been a member of the Toronto congregation since 1890. Together they were constituted a congregation of the Presbytery.
Acheson also approached the Old Light Reformed Presbyterians in Toronto with a view to a local union. Even though the Old Light group had had no success in maintaining a viable congregation, the talks failed.
The new Teeswater congregation called the Rev. H. W. Reed. He was one of the ministers deposed by the Old Light Reformed Presbyterian Synod for his part in the attempted merger with the New Light Reformed Presbyterians known as the East End Meeting and Platform. He brought with him some of his Old Light positions, one of which was to ban the use of wine in communion. At this, William Elliot withdrew from the congregation until Reed left in 1898.
In 1892, some families from Ripley, about sixteen miles from Teeswater, left their local Presbyterian Church over worship changes and asked to be made a congregation of the Presbytery. Their petition was granted, yet the congregation was effectively a preaching station of Teeswater and eventually merged with it two or three years later.
Reed’s departure in 1898 shook the congregation and brought division. A minority struggled on until the early 1920s when the Toronto congregation was no longer able to send out even occasional supply.
For a short time in the early 1890s, the congregation at East Williams, of which the late Rev. Lachlan Macpherson had been minister, was associated with the Pittsburgh and Ontario Reformed Presbyterian Presbytery.
The Toronto congregation called the Rev. Samuel Dempster in 1896. In 1910, the Reformed Presbyterian Presbytery of Pittsburgh and Ontario dissolved due to difficulties in Pittsburgh; and in 1911, the congregation moved from Carlton Street to Bloor Street and was rename Bloor East Presbyterian Church (Unaffiliated). After Dempster died in 1922, the congregation had to rely for many years on occasional supply.
Bloor East Presbyterian Church would later join Chesley to form the Presbyterian Reformed Church.
The Ontario congregations of the Reformed Presbyterian Presbytery of Pittsburgh and Ontario were, in the beginning, mostly made up of those who had left the Presbyterian Church in Canada over changes in worship practice. The extent to which either they or some of the ministers who supplied them adopted even New Light Reformed Presbyterian distinctives is not clear. Those who left did not remain in those circles.
The Toronto congregation was joined by people from Midwestern Ontario who moved to the city for work and by immigrants from Scotland looking for a Psalm-singing church. Because it was unaffiliated, it was a neutral place for people from Psalm-singing denominations not formally represented in the city to gather. By 1925, because of the number of members of the Free Presbyterian congregation of Ontario, formed in 1912, and Free Presbyterians directly from Scotland, the congregation took on much of that denomination’s distinctives, even though it remained unaffiliated.
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