I am deeply honoured to be with you this evening. The Heritage Lodge has given us so many reasons to be proud of it. In recent years I have not attended as many meetings as I should have liked; and thereby hangeth a tale. In the days when I was commuting across the Big Pond as an officer of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, my English brethren kept on telling me that I would never really understand Freemasonry until I was exalted to the Holy Royal Arch Degree. So, I succumbed and joined King Cyrus Chapter, No. 232, here in Toronto, and I have enjoyed my membership very much; the difficulty is that it meets on the third Wednesday of the month. It is a fairly small group, and my attendance there was (and is) far more essential than it is at the mob scenes of The Heritage Lodge.

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Now I want to begin by going briefly to the days before The Heritage Lodge was being formed. In 1973-74 our friend and founder, Brother and Professor Jacob Pos, was able to spend an academic year on sabbatical leave in the South Island of New Zealand, and there he became closely associated with The Masters and Past Masters Lodge, No., 130, in Christchurch, N.Z. This is a research lodge that was warranted in 1902 - a century ago, if you can picture that. A mere five years ago (in July 1997), I was able to attend the Lodge, and was given the privilege of visiting its Library, which is located in the Canterbury Masonic Centre; and there I found a number of books that had been donated by Jack Pos.

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At all events, on his return to Canada, Bro. Pos began working on the possibility of founding a research lodge in Ontario. This was a project that had been tried more than once, but without success. After all, our Grand Lodge has a clear idea of what a lodge is supposed to do. It confers degrees, drawing its members from a limited geographical jurisdiction. The notion of a lodge that did no degree work, and admitted members from over the province, was completely alien. Not for the first time! Apparently, it was because a Research Lodge was not feasible that the Toronto Society for Masonic Research was formed in 1921, and the Canadian Masonic Research Association was founded in 1949.

 

Anyway Bro. Pos worked tirelessly and fearlessly. Some of the details are familiar, but some less or so. It seems that the first organizational meeting to plan for a research was held on October 27 1976 . The minutes were sent to the members of what is known as the Grand East (a group that is composed of the Grand Master, the Deputy Grand Master, and the Past Grand Masters). (This is a body, which presumably exists in order to give the Grand Master practical advice that is based on their personal experience, but a body, which has, as Bro. Pos has pointed out, no constitutional authority.) And apparently in November, Jack Pos was invited to present the proposal for this unique Lodge to the Grand East. There was only token support, because the Past Grand Masters insisted that it was necessary to proceed in complete conformity with the Regulations and Constitution of Grand Lodge. But we are told that one Grand Master, M.W. Bro. W. K. Bailey, was able to clear the air, with the result that the Grand Master, M.W. Bro. E.W. Nanckivell directed the Grand Secretary to send a copy of a petition for dispensation to form a new lodge. So a Founders' Meeting for the Lodge was held on May 18, 1977.