OUR CLERGY

Rev. NATHAN J.A. HUMPHREY, RECTOR

Following graduation from the Yale Divinity School in 1997, Fr. Humphrey spent some years as a lay chaplain to an Episcopal day school before being ordained in 2001. He served as a curate for four years in Maryland, and for eight years was a member of the ministry team at St. Paul’s, K Street, in Washington, DC, one of the great bastions of Anglo-Catholicism in the United States, including two six-month terms as priest-in-charge. He was then recruited by the Bishop of Rhode Island as vicar of the Zabriskie Memorial Church of Saint John the Evangelist in Newport, to restore it to long-term sustainability. When he first arrived in 2013, the average Sunday attendance was below 25, but by 2016 the growth was so significant that the church had regained parish status, and Fr. Humphrey was installed as rector. He served there for eight years, re-animating St. John’s by, among other things, founding a choir school program for boys and girls. Fr. Humphrey is married to Anne Stone, a communications consultant, and they have two teenagers – Margaret and Andrew.

To contact Fr. Humphrey:
frhumphrey@stthomas.on.ca
416-979-2323
(Photo: Danielle Sum)

Rev. JAMES SHIRE, Interim Associate Priest

Fr. James Shire has been serving at St. Thomas's since 2016, when he became the program coordinator for the Friday Food Ministry, a weekly drop-in meal program that serves Toronto's homeless and marginally housed population. He was ordained to the transitional diaconate in the Diocese of Hawai'i in December 2019 and ordained to the priesthood at St. Thomas's in October 2020. Fr. Shire has been a pastoral associate at St. Thomas's since December 2020, continuing his role as the Friday Food Ministry coordinator and serving as the secretary of the Acolytes’ Guild. In July 2022, he was appointed Interim Associate Priest by the Bishop.

Fr. Shire is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto in the Department for the Study of Religion, where he studies Syriac Christian monasticism in eighth-century Iraq. He also has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Toronto. Previously, Fr. Shire received a Master of Divinity degree from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, CA, in 2015 and a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA, in 2007.

To contact Fr. Shire: frshire@stthomas.on.ca
To contact the Friday Food Ministry: fridayfoodministry@gmail.com

HONORARY ASSISTANT CLERGY

REV. IAN NICHOLS

Fr. Ian Nichols has been an honorary assistant since September 2000. Before that his wife, Jean, and their eldest daughter, Janet, had been singing in the Choir at St. Thomas's for several years. Ian and Jean have three adult children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Ian was born in Kent, England, and came to Canada at age 10 with his parents, brother, and sister. He studied at the University of Toronto and Wycliffe College, and was ordained deacon in 1964 and priest in 1965. For eight years, he served in the Diocese of Fredericton, first as assistant curate in the parish of Fredericton and then as rector of the Parish of Stanley. He moved back to Toronto in 1972 and served as associate priest at St. Wilfrid's Islington, and rector of St. Nicholas Birch Cliff.

In the mid-1970s, he began to have increasing difficulty with his eyesight because of a degenerative condition called retinitis pigmentosa; he was registered as a blind person in October 1977. His significant difficulty with independent mobility led him to search within and outside the Church for an alternative form of ministry, and in 1978 he went to London, England, to take the course in physiotherapy run by the Royal National Institute for the Blind. Upon his return, he obtained a position at the Toronto East General Hospital, where he worked as a physiotherapist until his retirement in 2003. Throughout those years, he continued to practise his vocation as a priest, as an honorary assistant at St. Michael's Highgate in London, at St. Nicholas Birch Cliff, and at the Church of St. Simon-the-Apostle in Toronto. At St. Thomas's, Fr. Nichols' role is mostly liturgical. With the necessary assistance, he officiates or assists at Sunday services, and celebrates a weekday mass twice each month.

Rev. ROY HOULT, RECTOR EMERITUS

Thoroughly enjoying being retired, Fr Hoult, rector emeritus, also never forgets how much he enjoyed more than 40 years of ordained ministry, over half of which was spent as rector of St. Thomas's. He and his late wife, Diane, raised three sons: Colin, Jonathan, and Neil very much grew up in and around the rectory on Huron Street and are now successful in their chosen careers. Fr. Hoult himself stays in touch with the wider world via his computer and indulges in at least two of his hobbies: model railroading and gardening, each in admittedly limited space. He is enormously appreciative of being invited to assist the rector of St. Thomas’s in whatever ways he can.