HILLIER, SYDNEY JOHN (1888-1980)

HILLIER, SYDNEY JOHN, United Church minister, Chatham, 1948-54; b. Dorset, England, 13 Oct 1888, s/o Charles B. Hillier and Mary M. Loader; m. 1932, Mary Thompson Duff, of Carbonear, Nfld; d. Whitby, Ont., 9 Mar 1980.

Sydney J. Hillier entered the Methodist ministry on trial in Newfoundland in 1913. He later attended Victoria College in St John's and saw action with the Canadian Signal Corps in France for two years. He was ordained in 1919 and occupied a succession of Methodist and United Church pulpits in Newfoundland, the last being at Grand Falls, where he was based for fifteen years. He was called to St Andrew's United Church, Chatham in 1948, as successor to a somewhat younger man, the Rev. Francis E. MacPherson.

Although he was sixty-five years old when he left the Miramichi in 1954, Hillier took a pastorate at Brooklin, Ont. He retired in 1961 but continued to do supply work. His wife, Mary T. Duff, predeceased him. He was ninety-one when he died in 1980, survived by two sons and two daughters.