Addie Aylestock

Rev. Addie Aylestock (1909–1998) was a Canadian minister in the British Methodist Episcopal Church, the first woman minister to be ordained in that church, She was born in Glen Allan, near Elmira, Ontario, from one of the many black farming communities in the province of Ontario; her family lived depending on where work was available. Her family was descended from blacks who settled along the Conestogo River in Regional Municipality of Waterloo and Wellington County, Ontario.

She was raised in the (white) Methodist Church; she moved to Toronto when the Great Depression struck, and got a job as a domestic servant, and later as a dressmaker. A desire to become a missionary (in Liberia) led her to enroll in the (transdenominational) Toronto Bible College, from which she graduated in 1945.

She joined the British Methodist Episcopal Church (an offshoot of the African Methodist Episcopal Church) and became a deaconess in 1944. Her first position was in the church in Africville. Aylestock's obituary, published in the St. Catharines Standard, said she also presided over churches in Fort Erie and Niagara Falls.