Unlike certain other Toronto parishes of the same era, such as St. Mary Magdalene's, St Thomas's, Huron Street, and St. Matthias, Bellwoods, St Bart's was not an Anglo-Catholic foundation. The first Anglo-Catholic rector of St Bartholomew's was Charles Fredrick Pashler. A veteran of the First World War, who had been severely wounded at Monchy in August 1918, Pashler was influenced not only by the Tractarian and Ritualist movements of the Church of England, but also by the simple Roman Catholic piety he had witnessed in rural France: "the kindliness and unaffected piety of the people, the natural practice of their religion, the soutane-clad figures of their pastors in the village streets and country lanes" were all to have their influence on his ministry. Pashler was "unique among Toronto priests" of his generation "inasmuch as he always and everywhere wore his cassock, in and out of season" (a common practice on the Continent and in Anglo-Catholic parishes in England at the time).