Samuel Hume Blake

Blake and other prominent Toronto Anglicans had founded the Evangelical Association in 1896, a low-church lobby against clerical and high-church domination of the diocese of Toronto. The most significant achievement of the association, which was reorganized as the Church Association in 1873, was the establishment in 1877 of the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School (later renamed Wycliffe College) as an evangelical response to the high-church teachings of Trinity College. A supporter of the Church of England Deaconess and Missionary Training Home, which opened in 1893, Blake for decades was the pre-eminent, and the most colourful, lay representative at synod. Throughout his career Blake approached every task with the certainty of the evangelical. For him there was no paralyzing self-doubt. Whether he was arguing in court, opposing Sunday streetcars in Toronto, or raising funds for additions to his beloved Wycliffe, he was always the worker, the crusader.