The Anglican Church of Canada is the sole. In the same census, Ontario alone recorded 985,110 self-identified Anglicans, some 48% of all Anglicans in Canada.

Official Names of the Anglican Church of Canada

History
When John Cabot founded the first English colony in North America on 24 June 1497, there may have been some sort of religious service — it was St. John the Baptist's Day and the day was likely not a coincidence — yet there is no extant record. In any case, Cabot sailed under the authority of King Henry VII and the English Church was not yet separated from the See of Rome.

The English Church in British North America
The American Revolution split the Church of England in North America. One of many consequences of the revolution was establishment of a North American episcopacy. The first Anglican bishop in North America was Samuel Seabury who was consecreated by the Scottish Episcopal Church on 14 November 1784 because the Church of England had no legal mechanism to appoint a bishop outside of England. As Father Pat told his friends, he was:
After the conquest of Quebec and the American Revolution, many leading Anglicans argued for the Church of England to become the established church in the Canadian colonies. The Constitutional Act of 1791 was promulgated, and interpreted to mean that the Church was the established Church in the Canadas. The Church of England was established by law in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. In Lower Canada, the presence of a Roman Catholic majority made establishment in that province politically unwise. Bishop John Strachan of Toronto was a particular champion of the prerogatives of the Church of England.
The secular history of Canada depicts Bishop Strachan as an ally of the landed gentry of the so-called Family Compact of Upper Canada, opposed to the political aspirations of farmers and bourgeoisie for responsible government. Nonetheless, Strachan played considerable part in promoting education, as founder of Kings College (now the University of Toronto) and Trinity College. The Clergy reserves, land that had been reserved for use by the Protestant clergy, became a major issue in the mid-19th century. Anglicans argued that the land was meant for their exclusive use, while other Protestant denominations demanded that it be divided among them.
In Upper Canada, leading dissenters such as Methodist minister Egerton Ryerson — in due course a minister of education in the government of Ontario — agitated against establishment. Following the Upper Canada Rebellion, the creation of the united Province of Canada, and the implementation of responsible government in the 1840s, the unpopularity of the Anglican-dominated Family Compact made establishment a moot point. The Church was disestablished in Nova Scotia in 1850 and Upper Canada in 1854. By the time of Confederation in 1867, the Church of England was disestablished throughout British North America.

American revolution
Until the 1830s, the Anglican church in Canada was synonymous with the Church of England: bishops were appointed and priests supplied by the church in England, and funding for the church came from the British Parliament. The first Canadian synods were established in the 1850s, giving the Canadian church a degree of self-government. As a result of the Privy Council decision of Long v. Gray in 1861, all Anglican churches in colonies of the British Empire became self-governing. Even so, the first General Synod for all of Canada was not held until 1893. In that meeting, Robert Machray was chosen as the Canadian church's first Primate.
Expansion
Expansion evolved into a general complacency as the twentieth century progressed. During the early part of this period, the ACC reinforced its traditional role as the establishment church, although influences from the authochthonous Protestant social gospel movement, and the Christian socialism of elements in the Church of England increasingly were felt. This influence would eventually result in the creation of what would come to be known as the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund, in 1958.
By the middle of the century, pressure to reform the structures of the church were being felt. The name of the church was changed in 1955 from "The Church of England in Canada" to the "Anglican Church of Canada," and a major revision of the Book of Common Prayer was undertaken in 1962 — the first in over forty years. Despite these rather tepid changes, the church was still perceived as complacent and disengaged — a view emphasized by the title of Pierre Berton's best-selling commissioned analysis of the denomination, The Comfortable Pew, published in 1965.
Change became more rapid towards the close of the 1960s, as mainline churches including the Anglicans began to see the first wave of evaporation from the pews. Ecumenical relationships were intensified, with a view to full communion. While negotiations with the largest Canadian Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada, faltered in the early 1970s, the Anglican Church did achieve full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada as the century drew to a close. New liturgical resources were introduced, which would culminate in the publication of the Book of Alternative Services in 1985. Agitation for the ordination of women led to their inclusion in 1976 as priests, and - eventually - bishops. And social and cultural change led to the church's decision to marry divorced couples, endorse certain forms of contraception, and moves towards greater inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church.

The twentieth century
The national church is structured on the typical Anglican model of a presiding archbishop (the Primate) and Synod. The chief governing body of the church is the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, which meets triennially and consists of lay people, clergy, and bishops from each of the 29 dioceses. In-between General Synods, the day-to-day affairs of the ACC are administered by a group elected by General Synod, called the Council of General Synod (COGS), which consults with and directs national staff working at the church's headquarters in Toronto. Recently the church has considered rationalising its increasingly top-heavy episcopal structure as its membership wanes, which could mean a substantial reduction in the number of dioceses, bishops and cathedrals.

Structure

Main article: Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada Primate

Main article: General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada General Synod

Main article: Ecclesiastical provinces of the Anglican Church of Canada Provinces and dioceses
The interpretation of doctrine, discipline, and canon law is entrusted to the diocesan bishops, who work collegially as a House of Bishops. There is a national House of Bishops, which meets regularly throughout the year, as well as provincial houses of bishops. These are chaired, respectively, by the Primate and the individual metropolitans.

Houses of Bishops

For more details on the on-going dialogue between Anglicanism and the wider Church, see Anglican communion and ecumenism. Ecumenical relations
See also Book of Common Prayer
In 1918 and 1962 the ACC produced successive authoritative Canadian Prayer Books, substantially based on the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer (BCP); both were conservative revisions consisting largely of minor editorial emendations of archaic diction. In 1985 the Book of Alternative Services (BAS) was issued, officially not designated to supersede but to be used alongside the 1962 Prayer Book. It is a more thoroughgoing modernising of Canadian Anglican liturgies, containing considerable borrowings from Lutheran, Church of England, American Episcopalian and liberal Roman Catholic service books; it was received with general enthusiasm and in practice has largely supplanted the Book of Common Prayer, although the BCP remains the official Liturgy of the Church in Canada. A French translation, Le Recueil des Prières de la Communauté Chrétienne, was published in 1967. The increasing preference for the BAS among parishes and clergy has been countered by the founding of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, which strives to promote the use of the BCP. The tension between adherents of the BCP and advocates of the BAS has contributed to a sense of disaffection within the Church on the part of liturgical traditionalists. At the same time, there have been increasing calls for revision of the prayer books, perhaps involving the production of a single book encompassing elements from both resources. Even those who use the BAS have cited various shortcomings, and as it ages and newer liturgies are produced elsewhere in the Communion, a desire has been expressed for its revision. At the 2007 General Synod, a resolution was passed which will begin the process of developing a new primary liturgical resource
Hymnody is an important aspect of worship in Anglicanism, and the ACC is no different. There is no one hymnal required to be used, although the ACC has produced four successive authorised versions since 1908. The most recent, Common Praise, was published in 1998. Anglican plainsong is represented in the new hymnal, as well as in the older Canadian Psalter, published in 1963. Notable Canadian Anglican hymnists include Derek Holman, Gordon Light, Herbert O'Driscoll, and Healey Willan.
Like most churches of the Anglican Communion, the ACC was beset by intense conflict over the ritualism controversies of the latter nineteenth century, leading in some extreme cases to schism. Throughout much of the twentieth century, parishes - and, to a certain extent, dioceses or regions - were more or less divided between high church (Anglo-Catholic), low church (evangelical), and broad church (middle-of-the-road). Many of these designations have become muted with time, as the passions which fired the debate have cooled and most parishes have found a happy medium or accommodation.

Liturgy and service books
As is the case in churches directly influenced by Anglican ethos and theology, the ACC tends to reflect the dominant social and cultural strains of the nation in which it finds itself. For most of its history, the ACC embodied the conservative, colonial outlook of its mostly British-descended parishioners and of English Canada as a whole. In the post-World War II period, as the character of Canada changed, so too did the attitudes of people in the pews, and by extension, the church.

Social issues and theological division
In recent years the ACC has been a leading force for reform within the Anglican Communion. In the 1970s, Primate Ted Scott argued at the Lambeth Conference in favour of women's ordination. The ACC ordained its first female priest in 1976, and its first female bishop in 1993. Many parishes, particularly in the west and even more particularly on aboriginal reserves, were already served by women deacons and allowing them to be ordained priests simply regularized a situation which had long pertained and permitted the full sacerdotal ministry to be brought to parishes they served. Nonetheless, this reform — in concert with such moves as allowing the remarriage of divorced persons — caused strains among more conservative parishes, both Anglo-Catholic and evangelical. In the early 1970s, some members of the ACC left to join dissident Anglican groups such as the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada.

Ordination of women and remarriage of divorced persons
More recently, in 2002, the Diocese of New Westminster (located in the southwest corner of British Columbia) voted to permit the blessing of same-sex unions by parishes requesting authorization to do so)
To date, the ACC has resolved neither the question of ordaining non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy nor the question of blessing same-sex unions. Thus far blessing of same-sex unions has been permitted only in seven parishes in the Diocese of New Westminster.
In 2004, a Primate's Theological Commission was asked to examine whether or not such blessings were a matter of doctrine. The findings, contained in the St. Michael Report, declared that blessing same-sex unions by the Church is not a matter of pastoral discipline, but of doctrine, although not core doctrine (in the sense of being credal). It also noted that blessing a same-sex union that had been performed by a civil authority was really no different than actually performing such a marriage.
At the General Synod in June 2007, a resolution to accept the St. Michael Report was passed after an attempt to defer the matter to the 2010 Synod failed. Another motion passed that said the blessing of same-sex relationships is not in conflict with the core doctrine of the Anglican Church of Canada, in the sense of being credal. A follow-up resolution to permit dioceses to bless same-sex marriages was passed by the house of clergy and laity, but was narrowly defeated in the house of bishops, with 21 opposed and 19 in favour. The Synod passed a resolution requesting a study of the theological implications of allowing "all legally qualified persons" to marry in the Church.

Inclusion of gays and lesbians

Main article: Canadian residential school system Indian residential schools

Cathedrals and notable parishes of the Anglican Church of Canada

Main article: List of Anglican cathedrals in Canada Cathedrals
The Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Toronto was the home parish of the organist and composer Healey Willan, who composed much of his liturgical music for its choirs. It is the inspiration for the parish of St Aiden in Robertson Davies's novel The Cunning Man. St. Thomas', Toronto, was at one time the parish church of the English accompanist Gerald Moore, who was an assistant organist there. The hymn tune "Bellwoods" by James Hopkirk, sung world-wide to the hymn "O day of God draw nigh," by the Canadian theologian Robert B.Y. Scott, was named for St. Matthias Bellwoods, in Toronto, where Hopkirk was organist. St John's, Elora, is a concert venue of the Elora Music Festival; its choir, also known as the Elora Festival Singers, is the professional core of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and its CDs are available around the world. St Bartholomew's, Ottawa, located near to Rideau Hall and also known as the Guards Chapel has been the place of worship for Governors General of the Canadas and then Canada since 1866, before the wider confederation of the British North American colonies.
Notable parishes

List of dioceses of the Anglican Church of Canada
Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Canada)
Anglican Planet Notes
Chronological order of publication (oldest first)

Peake, Frank A. (1959). The Anglican Church in British Columbia. Vancouver: Mitchell Press. 
Carrington, Philip (1963). The Anglican Church in Canada. Toronto: Collins. 
Grove, Lyndon (1979). Pacific Pilgrims. Vancouver: Centennial Committee of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster. 
Chapman, Mark (2006). Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280693-9. 

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