History
Originally, the property was the farm and summer home of Sir Henry Pellatt,[2] and it was named for his first wife, Mary.[3] It has been owned by the Augustinians since 1935.[4]
An agricultural school was established on the grounds in the 1930s by the Basilian fathers, and in 1942 the Archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal McGuigan, "invited the Augustinians to establish a shrine and to offer a program of weekend retreats for lay people"[2] He expressed that it was his own personal dream that it was his hope that this shrine at the Marylake Centre would become not only an important place of pilgrimage in honour of our Blessed Mother Mary in this area, but that one day it would officially become the centre of Marian devotion for all Ontario.[5] The success of this program resulted in the construction of the shrine in the 1960s, which was dedicated on November 30, 1978 by Cardinal Carter.[3]
The building consists of split fieldstone native to Marylake, based on designs by J. Stuart Cauley.
Marylake held its first mass in 1945. It is the site for a yearly June pilgrimage by 3,000 Danube Swabians for an open-air mass paying "homage to Germans expelled from Eastern Europe".[6][7]
In October 2012, the Archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal Thomas Christopher Collins, declared Marylake as one of four official archdiocesan sites of sacred pilgrimage for the Year of Faith. On February 3, 2013, in a Solemn High Mass, the Very Reverend Bernard Scianna, O.S.A., Ph.D., Prior Provincial of the Canadian and Midwest Augustinians, officially blessed and designated the main entrance to the shrine as a holy door open to all who come to Marylake seeking the special graces of the Year of Faith.[8]
The Rosary Path at Marylake The Queen of the Holy Rosary Shrine (Lay Apostolate) gained approval from the Augustinian Friars to place an environmental sculpture of the Rosary at Marylake In 2014, ground was broken to build the largest rosary path in North America. In August 2016, Cardinal Collins blessed and Opened the rosary path. The Corpus of The Great Crucifix which is at the beginning of the rosary path was created by the world-renowned sculptor Timothy Schmaltz. In 2016, Mary's Way of the Cross was added to the pathway, and in 2017, large (7' X 4') glass panels created by Stuart Reid were added to the Way of the Cross.
The rosary path at Marylake was conceived by architect Ted Harasti of Toronto. After receiving a Marian locution on a retreat in 1974, Harasti made it his quest to build the rosary path at the request of the Blessed Mother Mary.
