History

CANADA’S SUMMER INSTITUTE OF CHURCH MUSIC

A Brief History

Our History

For more than 50 years, the Summer Institute of Church Music has offered a unique professional development, study, and retreat program for church musicians, worship leaders and choristers.

Founded in 1970 by Dr. Stanley L. Osborne, the Summer Institute of Church Music has for over 50 years welcomed students from across Canada and the United States, from all Christian denominations and at all levels of ability for a week of retreat, study, networking and inspiration in the field of church music. It was the first and remains Canada’s only residential summer study program in church music.

At the time of founding SICM, Dr. Osborne was principal of the Ontario Ladies’ College in Whitby, Ontario, now the Trafalgar Castle School, and so the Institute has called this historic building ‘home’ for most of its history. In 1974, he resigned as SICM’s Founding Director and was succeeded by his assistant, Kenneth Inkster. In 1976, using the proceeds from his book, If Such Holy Song (a commentary on the Anglican/United Church Hymn Book of 1971), Dr. Osborne and his wife Florence endowed what is now called the Osborne Organ Competition, which has been held in even-numbered years.

The annual program offers daily chapel worship, classes in organ/piano and choral/vocal music and more recently, theme sessions – workshops to expand special skills, practical help for wellness and exploration of other important issues facing churches and their music.

Since SICM 2005 a highlight of Institute Week is students rehearsing and presenting a closing choral concert, eventually growing to welcome local choristers on summer hiatus from their Community and Church Choirs. In 2025, as this resumes post-COVID on its 20th anniversary, the Community Choral Program is daily evening rehearsals under the direction of, and accompanied by the SICM Faculty culminating in a closing Gala Choral and Organ concert.

Dr. Inkster’s Thirty Year Tenure

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.

SICM Since 2005

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 and the unlikely launch of SICM West

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.

SICM 2023 and beyond

Following SICM 2022’s ambitious two-campus launch including a cautious return of evening choral rehearsals in Edmonton and Whitby, lingering tensions around the COVID shutdown contributed to poor registration projections for the planned 2023 Institute, resulting in its cancellation. The Board stepped back for a moment of reflection and visioning facilitated by Edmonton-based “Western Management Consulting,” and instead of pursuing the two-campus in-person model settled on a briefer new and completely hybrid format originating at least for the moment from its historical home base of Whitby, Ontario. The new format spanned three days of daytime programming conveniently timed for online attendance from all Canadian time zones – a smaller, more portable concept that may one day also enable presentation of SICM in other parts of the country.

A resounding success, the fully-hybrid SICM 2024 featured the return of the Osborne Organ Competition, in which three excellent young Ontario and Québec organ students competed once again, after several years’ hiatus, for prizes supporting their musical studies. SICM 2025 is set, at time of writing, to reintroduce the full Community Choral Program, in which choristers local to the SICM gathering and on summer hiatus from their Community and Church Choirs will once again join with the SICM day students from July 21-24 in preparing and offering a closing Gala Choral and Organ Concert. SICM 2025 will also name Patricia Young of St John’s, Newfoundland the 9th Fellow of the Summer Institute of Church Music (F.SICM), marked by a world premiere choral anthem by composer Jason Locke.

Churches face challenges in the mid-2020s – but SICM is here – and committed – to help Church Music – and Musicians – flourish and inspire and enrich communities through the many gifts of music.

Written by Christopher Dawes, Director of Planning and Mission, Summer Institute of Church Music, 2023.

Honorary Fellowship – F.SICM

The Fellowship of the Summer Institute of Church Music (F.SICM) is a biennial honorary recognition awarded by SICM’s Board of Governors to an individual who has made significant contributions to church music in Canada.

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Community Choral Program

The evening Community Choral Program is a reinstated tradition of the Summer Institute of Church Music, bringing together SICM students and local choral singers for a collaborative concert that showcases sacred choral music as a highlight of the program’s week.