The Church at the Centre of Swansea

For the Jacobi family of Harcroft Rd., St. Olave’s Anglican Church was more than a place of worship — it was the centre of community life in Swansea.

Nancy Jacobi joined Brownies there as a girl. “I was a fairy and I loved dancing around the toadstool,” she recalls. Her mother attended the Women’s Association, and in her teens Nancy joined a group for young people.

“In retrospect, it was so much fun to go to the church,” she says. “It was St. Olave’s that provided community.”

Nancy’s father Bill Jacobi brought that same sense of community and fun to their home on Harcroft Rd. He was a career man at the Canada Life Insurance Co., but when he wasn’t working, he was organizing games and sing-songs on the front lawn of the family’s property, plucking his old ukulele for anyone who would listen.