But there were times when he was himselfquite forthright in speaking his mind. There was never anything personal or nasty in how he did it. While he was at St. Mark's he became quite notorious as a critic ofthe Masonic Order. His predecessor at St. Mark's, the Very Reverend E.B.N. Cochran, who had moved across town to become Dean of All Saints' Cathedral, had been very prominent in Masonic affairs. Staff did not think that some of the Masonic rituals could be reconciled with Christian doctrine, and he was not slow to say so. Undoubtedly it made him unpopular in certain quarters. One time, some years after his retirement, he attended in Charlottetown the Atlantic Theological Conference that his successor at St. Peter‘s Cathedral, Canon Malcolm Westin, instituted, and listened to me give a paper on the Traetarian Movement in the Maritime Provinces. When I came to refer to the choice of Robert Harold Waterman as Coadjutor Bishop of Nova Scotia in 1948 l attributed Bishop Waterman's election to the familiarity he had gained in the Diocese as chairman of the post-war Anglican Advance Appeal. Staff disagreed. "They thought he was a Mason!" he called out from the floor, and the whole assembly collapsed in laughter.

Many years earlier, when I was a young priest newly come to my first sole charge as Rector of Canso-Queensport, and Father Staff was still at Tangier, I told him about the young son of the rector of one of the parishes in the Diocese who had found employment in Canso, but who was failing to darken the doors of the Church. Staff‘s comment was, ”Ask him what he's doing wrong!" He would have too. I didn't.

One time, fairly early on in his time as Archdeacon of Prince Edward Island, when I was rector of Summerside and rural dean, he called me on the telephone. "1 have threatened to resign!" he said. "Will you support me?" "Of course," I said, "What is it about?"

It was about his insistence that he be consulted on appointments of clergy to Island parishes. This the Bishop did not want to do. It was very convenient for the Bishop to have a place to which to move clergy who, for various reasons, needed to be moved, but whose reputations were such that they were difficult to place. For the Bishop to have two civil provinces within his diocese meant that he could give such individuals a fresh start with less likelihood of them being handicapped in the new place by having their reputation precede them. Archdeacon Tanton's purposes, on the other hand, were quite different. He wanted to build a team of priests in Prince Edward Island that would work together to build up the Church on the Island. He therefore wanted to have a say in who he got to work with.

I don't know what exactly came ofthis threat to resign. But I suspect he got his way, for there was no resignation.

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