Ralph Horner, a native of Shawville, had been ordained as a Methodist minister in the 1880s, but could not accept the “restriction” of a Circuit Ministry. As an evangelist he embraced the doctrines of the Holiness Movement, a fundamentalist movement from the United States. Eventually his refusal to abide by the Montreal Conference rules, and to curb excessive behaviour and claims by his adherents, resulted in a break with authorities, and he was deposed from the Ministry in 1895. Horner attracted a small following in the Ottawa and Gatineau valleys; around 1900, he founded the Holiness Movement in Canada, based in Ottawa.
The Hornerite Church erected buildings in Lascelles and Wakefield. Until 1927, the one in Wakefield stood where Wakefield Bakery now is situated. The bakery was constructed on the foundations after a fire destroyed the church. Methodist records of the early 1900s show some loss of membership to this sect with a terse comment: “gone to the Hornerites.”