We are proud of our beautiful windows here at St. Philip, Oak Bay. The artist, a pioneer in Canadian glass art, Dr. Mary Filer, is a renowned nurse and teacher, a painter and sculptor, as well as an architectural glass designer. She has studied, painted and taught at Universities in Montreal, Pennsylvania and New York.

It was early on in her nursing career, on staff at the Montreal Neurological Institute, that Dr. Filer first painted nativity scenes on the windows to decorate for Christmas there. In the 1980s her mural, "The Advance of Neurology", in the Neuro's main boardroom was selected for Heritage Status by McGill.

Mary Filer was awarded a gold medal in Nursing, holds an honorary degree from Simon Fraser University, and the Silver Medal for Architectural Stained Glass by the Royal Canadian Architectural Institute. A respected and honored artist for five decades, Dr. Filer now in her eighties, remains a much sought after artist. She currently lives and works in Vancouver.

In 1975, Parish Council commissioned Mary Filer to design a series of panels for the windows of the Church's south wall.

The theme for these windows was taken from an event relating to the life of our namesake, the apostle Philip. In John's Gospel (Ch.14: 8 &9), Philip poses a question to Jesus, saying, "Lord, show us the Father." In response to Philip, Christ declared: "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father ... I am in the Father, and the Father is in me."

Using abstract symbols, the windows are intended as a series of luminations unfolding and emphasizing this revelation. The artist worked with transparent and coloured layers of planal glass to create the mural’s contemporary design. With these 13 panels of geometric shapes of laminated coloured glass, Mary Filer has created a piece of work, heroic in scale. Covering the full length of the church, light streams and transforms the image in an exciting and ever changing way.

The design begins with the great Light of Revelation at the Last Supper. This burst of light embodies the idea of the Trinity symbolized in the three transparent shapes; the central cross is Christ in Glory; the left sphere is the Holy Spirit; the upper right square and circle is God the Father and the totality of heaven and earth.

On either side, the contrast of the primordial world and the urban world, in the landscape of Victoria, is suggested through placement of glass and the artist’s use of colour.

As the panels extend to the left, toward the climax of the end windows, the great panorama of the Olympic Mountains, the Gulf Islands, the Sea, and the sweep of Sky, with the Sun and Moon, even the City -- is revealed. The symbols on the far right, represent the dynamic, whirling life source - the creative energy of God the Father.

The windows were chiefly the gift of Mrs. MacDougall, honouring the memory of her husband, Major Keith MacDougall. Sharing in the gift were other Church members, offering memorials to loved ones, and too, members of St. Mary’s, Oak Bay, who founded the Parish of St. Philip in 1954.

The City of God

The glass work in the south window of the Narthex was donated to this Church community by the artist. On All Saints Day, 1978, Mary Filer dedicated the window art - to the Glory of God, and in loving memory of her parents Grace and Earle Filer.

In this construction, the artist uses the same symbol of the Holy Spirit depicted so effectively in the centre of the MacDougall Memorial Window. The circle in the square represents the unity of the temporal and spiritual world. In the "City of God" window, Mary has used the centre piece to represent an urban form - symbolizing the "Great Within" with entrances in its walls, it's boundaries demarcated by the square border which separates the radiant center piece from the symbol of the Fields of God.

Light of God

The West Window in the Narthex depicts the "Light of God." In this work, the artist has used vertical and diagonal beams to focus on the "jewel-like" source of creative inspiration. Mary has produced a symbol of spiritual revelation and joy which radiates light from above and within. This window was a gift to St. Philip's from Mrs. Joy Storkey in memory of her husband Bert.

Celestial Song

In 1986, ten years after the first panels were completed, members of St. Philip's Senior Choir commissioned the artist to do a second design, this time for the windows on the north side of the Church.

The Choir wanted to commemorate their enjoyment of sacred music and chose this as the artist's next theme. These window panels depict, figuratively, the abstract score of a Celestial Song. The pattern of form and colour has no reference to a conventional musical score, but establishes a lineal measure of Heaven above and Earth below with a song line between the two.

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