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LEVEL OF DESCRIPTION: Fonds
No.: PR2019
TITLE: John A.W. Langstone fonds
CREATOR: John A. W. Langstone
DATE RANGE: 1932-1946, 1994
EXTENT: 0.15 m of textual records. – 92 photographs: b&w
ADMINISTRATIVE
HISTORY/BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

John Arthur William Langstone was born in Toronto on August 30, 1913 to Arthur James and Coulina (Cook) Langstone. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Trinity College, University of Toronto and was ordained as a Deacon in the Anglican Church in 1938 by Archbishop Derwyn Owen of Toronto. He was then ordained as a Priest in 1939 and would later earn a Master of Divinity degree from Yale University.

Langstone served as Assistant Curate at the Church of St. John the Baptist in the Toronto Diocese of the Anglican Church until he joined the Canadian Army in 1943 as a chaplain. He married Alice Patricia Whitby in 1944 and the couple had two sons, Michael and David.

Langstone completed officers’ training in Brampton, Ontario and was then deployed with the Allied invasion of Occupied Europe during the Second World War. During his time as a military chaplain, Langstone served in England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany before returning to Canada upon his decommission in 1946.

Langstone continued to serve in the Toronto Diocese after the war, serving as Executive Officer of the Diocese and Honorary Assistant, Church of the Holy Trinity before becoming rector of Trinity Church, Port Credit, Ontario in 1950.

Langstone moved to Edmonton, Alberta in 1958 to serve as rector of St. George’s Church. In 1963 Langstone was made Canon of All Saints’ Cathedral and then Archdeacon of Edmonton in 1965. He was then made rector of St. Faith’s Church in 1969 until he was named Executive Archdeacon of the Diocese of Edmonton in 1971. The zenith of his ecclesiastical career came in 1976 when Langstone was consecrated as the sixth Bishop of Edmonton in 1976, a position he kept until his retirement in 1979.

Langstone died on February 26, 1994 in Edmonton.

CUSTODIAL HISTORY:The records were maintained by Langstone until his death in 1994, at which point they came into the custody of his widow, Alice Langstone. Alice Langstone donated the records, along with various artifacts related to John’s wartime service, to the Royal Alberta Museum in 1997. The Museum kept the artifacts and transferred these records to the PAA in 2009.
SCOPE AND CONTENT:

This material is exclusively related to Langstone’s wartime service as a chaplain in the Canadian Army. The material consists of correspondence, personnel records, records derived from the administration of Langstone’s ministry, diaries, sermon notes, orders of service, Khaki University of Canada records, newspapers, magazines, and ephemera collected by Langstone in liberated zones of Europe.

The newspapers and magazines include issues from various English parish newsletters (including the Helmsley, Milford, St. Alban’s, and St. Andrew’s parishes), issue No. 9 of The Lowdown (Canadian military paper), a magazine published by candidates and staff at the Officers’ Training Centre in Brockville, and V-E and V-J Day editions of The Maple Leaf (Canadian military paper).

The records also include material that Langstone used to teach courses at the Khaki University of Canada (an accredited school program provided for Canadian service personnel in Europe) and the Protestant Church School in the Netherlands, as well as detailed records related to the Officers’ Training Centre in Brockville.

The ephemeral material consists of various maps, guides, and pamphlets collected by Langstone in liberated countries. This material was created by local administrations to be distributed amongst Allied personnel for the purpose of orientation and outreach.

The photographs depict various locations across Europe that Langstone visited. Several of these images are printed on postcard stock and many of them have notes or messages written on them by Langstone or other correspondents.

ARRANGEMENT NOTE: When the records were first donated to the Royal Alberta Museum, Museum staff created an inventory of the material as it was received. Museum staff then accessioned and arranged the material based on locality and catalogued each file. The current arrangement mostly follows the arrangement imposed by the Royal Alberta Museum and the original file numbers given by RAM are noted on the file list, though some material was re-arranged based on the original order. The first inventory and the subsequent arrangement structure created by RAM are available in accession file PR2010.0597.
LANGUAGE NOTE: The material is in English and German.
ASSOCIATED MATERIAL: The Royal Alberta Museum holds artifacts related to Langstone’s wartime ministry. These can be found under the catalogue number H95.40.
RELATED RECORDS: Records related to Langstone’s career in the Edmonton Diocese of the Anglican Church can be found in Anglican Church holdings in the Provincial Archives of Alberta under the accession numbers PR1976.262/3, PR1980.241/2, PR1988.341/34-43, and PR1994.81/3-4.
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