For 30 years, the second Director of the Institute, Dr. Kenneth Inkster, served faithfully and with distinction. Under his leadership the Institute’s visiting faculty became a who’s who of prominent church musicians in North America, and generations of church musicians and hundreds of congregations were the beneficiaries.

Perhaps most significant during Dr. Inkster’s tenure were three developments in 2001: the adoption by Members of the Institute of its first Constitution, its registration as a Charitable Organization, and the election of its first Board of Governors to assist Dr. Inkster in the week’s presentation.

Also beginning in Dr. Inkster’s tenure and ever since, bursaries have been made available to assist church musicians in attending the Institute and in reaping its benefits for themselves and for their congregations.

In 2004, Dr. Inkster retired and was succeeded by the Institute’s third Director, Christopher Dawes.

As Director, Christopher Dawes and the Board of Governors reshaped the Institute to include an evening Chorister program for local singers, and a choral and organ concert presented by Faculty and students to culminate the week of study, and an annual theme, speaking to issues and ideas of current interest to churches and their musicians. The working Board swelled from five members to ten and began holding online Board meetings, that enabled involving members from more distant locations. In 2009, its 40th anniversary Session, SICM began (in odd-numbered years, alternating with the Osborne Competition) presenting prominent Canadian church musicians with the honorary title “Fellow of the Summer Institute of Church Music (F.SICM)”. Each occasion is marked with the commissioning, premiere, and publication of a new choral anthem by a Canadian composer in tribute to the honoree.

The Institute adopted a new logo in 2016 and incorporated as a federal not for profit corporation in 2017. SICM celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019, welcoming John Bell from Scotland’s Iona Community as its resident scholar and sponsoring a Hymn Tune Competition for settings of the original hymn text “True Source of Love” by former United Church Moderator the Rev. Walter Farquharson. With Federal Incorporation in 2017, SICM’s Board of Governors became a Board of Directors, and retired the position of an overall Institute Director, however Mr. Dawes has continued to serve on the Board of Directors, as Director for Planning and Mission.

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly affected the start of SICM’s second half-century, moving its 51st (2020) and 52nd (2021) Sessions fully online, and its 53rd in 2022 into only a partial return to the onsite programs of the past.  And yet the pandemic era ushered in exciting changes: SICM joined countless other organisations, institutions and individuals in jumping into online meetings and broadcasts – and came to understand them as a new avenue to promote its Aims and Objectives in our time.  Incredibly, in 2022 SICM Board members Gordon Adnams and Evelyn Grieger, assisted by Joy Berg and others developed and launched the dream of a new campus, SICM West at First Baptist Church in Edmonton with an entirely parallel organ and choral faculty to the continuing originary campus in Whitby.  The 26th Osborne Organ Competition had to be postponed in 2020 and 2022 due to COVID-19, although the 2022 SICM program included a unique online webcast celebration of this legacy of Florence and Stanley Osborne hosted by Christopher Dawes and SICM East Organ instructor Sarah Svendsen with virtual performances and online interviews with past laureates of what is now known as the Osborne Organ Competition. SICM looks forward to offering the 26th biennial Osborne Organ Competition in 2024 after a four-year hiatus.