ATHABASCA — It all started on a perfectly normal Saturday in 1976 when the lives of the Elmar and Mavis Neil family changed forever.
The traditional routine was for Elmar to drive his wife to buy groceries but on this day, he disappeared, and with no cell phones to be found for at least another decade, no one knew where he had wandered off to, but the faithful family trusted in God and prayed for his safety.
“My dad felt the calling by the Holy Spirit to go up north, but he didn’t know where,” said daughter Marilyn McGreer in a recent interview. “There was no street phone for him to call us, and the Holy Spirit led him all the way to Booker T. (Edwards) house, and he knocks on the door, and they think he’s an insurance man.”
Edwards was an African American farmer, a son of J.D. Edwards, who had immigrated from Oklahoma to homestead in the Amber Valley area, east of Athabasca, and the friendship between the two men lasted a lifetime.
Edwards' wife Ruby and Mavis, 'Mummy Neil' to the church members, were the hostesses after Sunday church and the two women exchanged recipes with Mavis cooking her spicy Caribbean foods and Ruby making delicious desserts.
“May 1976 was our first church service in the Amber Valley Community Centre and then we had a church opening Oct. 17, 1976,” McGreer said.
And the Neils travelled to Amber Valley from Edmonton every weekend to hold services for several years, eventually settling in Westlock so they were situated between the best of both worlds – the church in St. Albert and the first one started in Amber Valley.
“We would go up there on the weekends and then travel back Sunday night and go to school the next day on Monday,” said McGreer. "This was our life until we left home.”
The church continued to grow as more people became aware of it.
“The First Nations people around that area, around Perryvale, Caslan and that area, they saw the church as a safe place to come,” she said. “Because it was a welcoming place for the immigrant families, the Black families, and the American families and the First Nation families.”
It was Feb. 1, 1982, when Neil bought a church building in the Town of Athabasca with the help of church donors and named it Shiloh Pentecostal Tabernacle of Athabasca, but the journey to get to the point of starting his own church had actually started many years ago in Jamaica.
Jamaican roots
Neil was born in St. Mary, Jamaica, in 1922 and married Mavis Crawford Dec. 26, 1943. From there they lived in Birmingham, in the U.K. from 1951 until he came to Canada in 1966 with his wife and children following in 1969.
“As a carpenter and sole provider for his family, he emigrated to England in 1951 seeking a better standard of living," McGreer said. “After living in England for several years, he made the courageous decision to migrate to Canada in 1966. He initially went to Toronto but eventually chose Edmonton, considering it the perfect place to raise his children.”
It was during this time Neil felt the call to ministry which led to the founding of the Amber Valley church and one in St. Albert where his son-in-law Ted McGreer, Marilyn’s husband, is pastor.
Daddy Neil and Mummy Neil served the Athabasca church from 1973 to 1992 and were succeeded by their son, Dr. Trevor Neil and his wife Phyllis from 1992 to 2016 and the current pastor is Joel Shilling with his wife Vera.
McGreer noted her father prophesized that when the congregation reached 60 people, they would purchase a new building and it came as a shock to Pastor Shilling who had recently come across a property he is keeping his eye on because the congregation is almost 60 people.
“It’s a beautiful property, about two and a half acres,” he said. “Back here we have a community garden and our Sunday school every year plants vegetables and come harvest we hand it out to our community.”
The whole church is on board, he said, with everyone giving, contributing, and sacrificing every week.
“Either that building or something else, but we definitely know we're moving forward, the growth is there,” said Shilling. “We're so excited because we're building upwards because of a solid foundation. The only way we can go is up.”
A parishioner's perspective
One of those people contributing to the new building was Ian Jackson, who has been attending Shiloh Tabernacle for over 40 years.
“It would have been the summer of 1980,” he said. “There was a street meeting and I remember I was sitting in the (Union) Hotel bar and it had created quite a stir and people reacted to it differently — the manager of the hotel he was really upset.”
Jackson however went to check it out and met a woman so, they started dating and the church has since become a way of life for him.
“I remember kneeling on the side of the steps (to the stage) and I said, ‘God, what is going on here?’” he said. “And I know I felt a touch, not on the outside, on the inside. That was my first spiritual experience.”
Eventually he was baptized in the church by Daddy Neil and has remained through every pastor since.
Recent celebration
It was Dec. 11, 2022, when three of Neil’s daughters and two sons-in-law travelled to Athabasca to take part in a special service where they reminisced about the beginning of the church and sang hymns, including "May the Lord, God, bless you real good", an apt description of the life of their father.
“I’ve been anticipating this Sunday for a long time,” McGreer said. “As it got closer to the day, I’ve been so teary. The reception has been wonderful being here with Pastor Shilling and First Lady (Vera Shilling) and all the familiar faces.”
Her brother-in-law Bishop Robert Barnett, who hadn’t been back since the 1990s, had a similar reaction.
“This just brings up memories,” he said. "It was a bit emotional for me today. The first thing that I noticed when I got here was the presence of the Lord was richly in the spirit. It’s really something to see that the dream has not faded away.”
Janet Neil noted that some things have changed around town in the 15 or so years since she’s been to Athabasca.
“Some spots when I drove around town, it looks exactly the same,” she said. “Being in the church, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's very nice.”
"Breathless" was how Sharon Neil-Laumon described coming back to the church her father founded.
“This church brings back memories of my parents,” she said. “Everything that I remember participating in as a child. When you walk into these spaces, the flood of memories, it's just overwhelming and when I saw the pictures of my parents on the wall today, I grabbed a Kleenex because that was very emotional. I still feel the spirit of them here.”
Neil died on Jan. 28, 1992, leaving a strong spiritual legacy for his children. Mavis passed away Dec. 16, 2012.
“He was a visionary, a pioneer, a man with a heart for the people of the community,” McGreer said.
