by Cheryl Girard
Winnipeg, Manitoba
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The fourth St. Boniface church, seen in this 1882 photo, preceded the grand Basilica built in the early 20th century.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, St. Boniface Cathedral (1863), #13.
It was almost two hundred years ago in November of 1818 when the very first church in Winnipeg went up on the east banks of the Red River, the historic site of St. Boniface Cathedral. In all, this site has been home to six churches.
The population of the Red River settlement was only a little over 200 people in the fall of 1817. In 1818 swarms of grasshoppers had descended on the strip farms of Red River resulting in the farmlands having produced virtually nothing for two years. Survival was difficult in this isolated community, a wilderness actually, save for about 150 Scottish settlers, 45 de Meurons and about 26 French Canadians and aboriginals.
This was the settlement that awaited Father Joseph-Norbert Provencher when he arrived from Quebec in the summer of 1818 to provide for the spiritual needs of the Catholics. A large man, standing six feet four inches tall, he arrived at the forks by canoe and soon recruited workers to build a small log chapel. This chapel was dedicated to St. Boniface, the English missionary monk who spread the Catholic faith throughout Germany and France in the 8th century. It was the first mission west of the Great Lakes.
This little log structure was replaced soon after by a larger building and when Provencher became a bishop in 1822 his church then became a cathedral.
In 1832 a third church with twin spires was built by Bishop Provencher to serve the growing community. According to a census taken in Red River at this time there were about 2,751 people—over 1,500 of whom were Roman Catholic.
The community grieved when this church burned to the ground in December of 1860. A pot of melting buffalo tallow meant for Christmas candles had boiled over and the flames from the grease had swept through the bishop’s quarters, the cathedral and other adjoining buildings. Parts of the altar, the Stations of the Cross, and a statue of the Virgin Mary were rescued but many archives and important documents were destroyed. The well-known bells of the St. Boniface Cathedral, which had been ringing out over the prairies since 1840 were severely damaged from the flames and had to be shipped to England several times for repair.
Replacing the former church, a more modest stone cathedral was built in 1862 under the direction of Bishop Taché, who became the second Bishop of St. Boniface in 1854, a year after Bishop Provencher had died. After years of difficulties in getting the 1,600 pound bells repaired they were finally installed again in this church. By now these bells, which were the pride of the settlement, had been made famous by the American poet John G. Whittier.
A fifth structure, an even larger stone cathedral, was built on the site in order to meet the needs of the growing French community in 1905 and was completed in 1908. Archbishop Langevin blessed the cornerstone of what soon became a magnificent landmark in the western prairies. Designed by the Montreal architectural firm of Marchand and Haskell, it was an impressive example of French Romanesque architecture, known as the St. Boniface Basilica. The bells of St. Boniface were finally re-installed in this church and rang once again but, sadly, not for long.
This striking cathedral also was shockingly destroyed by flames on 22 July 1968. Shortly after a crew of workers had stopped for a break while working on repairs to the cathedral’s twin towers and roof, flames were observed shooting from the roof of the cathedral. Reportedly, the church was gone in less than an hour leaving only the front and an outside shell. It was a terrible loss for the St. Boniface community as very few items survived the flames. And, sorrowfully, the once historic bells of the cathedral were also damaged beyond any repair.
Reconstruction work on the sixth and present St. Boniface Cathedral began in the early 1970s with local Franco-Manitoban Etienne Gaboury as the architect. Built within the ruins, its design includes the sacristy, façade and walls of the former basilica.
It is much smaller than the 1908 church but is still able to seat 1000 parishioners. Within the façade lie the tombs of the bishops and priests of St. Boniface, J. N. Provencher, A. A. Taché and L. P. A. Langevin.
Buried here in western Canada’s oldest Catholic cemetery are many of Manitoba’s key historic figures such as Louis Riel, Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière, Marie-Anne Lagimodière as well as the graves of family members of the popular St. Boniface writer Gabrielle Roy.
The Grey Nuns who arrived to aid bishops Provencher and Taché and to do great work in the 1840s occupied a house alongside the site and their long white log house is now a museum and the oldest occupied house in Winnipeg.
Present-day St. Boniface Cathedral, surrounded by the imposing ruins of its most recent forerunner, marks one of the most historic sites in Winnipeg and attracts thousands of visitors each year.
Old St. James Anglican Church and cemetery, south of the Polo Park shopping mall.
Source: Gordon Goldsborough
Today, the little log church built in 1853 on land along the Assiniboine River is the oldest surviving wooden church still in use in Western Canada. But it was not always so.
Condemned in 1936, Winnipeg’s St. James Anglican Church stood for many years as but an unused relic of the past. It was not until 31 years later that the church was finally refurbished.
Much use has been made of this historic, humble structure, as it faithfully served the developing area of St. James for almost 70 years—its beginnings going back to 1851 when the parish of St. James was first founded.
Its story began when Bishop David Anderson of St. John’s Anglican Church, farther north along the Red River, instructed Rev. W. H. Taylor, newly arrived from England, to establish a new church on a seven-mile-long stretch of land along the Assiniboine, granted to the church by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Taylor’s work had been funded by the S.P.C. or the Society for the Propagation of Christianity.
The church was to serve the small community of former Kildonan settlers, retired Hudson’s Bay employees and military pensioners who had moved west from the Red River settlement to take up river lots along the north bank of the Assiniboine. In those days, it was considered a good distance from the original and first Anglican Church on the Red.
Long narrow strips of farms on an immense flat plain ran back from the rivers in the early 1850s. The little “town” at the junction of the rivers, which would become Winnipeg, consisted only of scattered windworn buildings surrounded by lakes of Red River mud, which were extremely difficult to navigate. Battles with wandering bands of Sioux still took place and the settlement on the plains was known for its floods, mosquitoes and grasshopper plagues as well as for its adventurous “wild west” spirit.
Wisely, a site was chosen on high ground near to an old aboriginal burial ground. The land was believed to have never experienced the much-dreaded floods that had frequently submerged homes and buildings in previous years. Second, there was a nearby ford that people, living on the south side of the Assiniboine, could use to cross over.
The land set aside for the church was thought to be a safe haven and, in fact, nearby settlers camped out on the land to escape the 1852 flood that had deluged the rest of the area.
Author Christopher Dafoe wrote in his Winnipeg: The Heart of the Continent that the flood of 1852 descended so suddenly that people had gone to bed and then woke up in the middle of the night to find their beds floating. Although the site chosen was secure, the timbers for the church did not escape the rising waters of the flood of 1852, and floated away requiring new oak timbers to be brought in on rafts from Baie St. Paul, before construction could continue.
On 8 June 1853, the cornerstone of the new church was laid and the church with its rough, hand-hewn logs was completed by the men of the parish by the end of the year. It was consecrated as St. James Church on 29 May 1855, named after St. James the apostle, by Rev. William Taylor who became its first rector. The structure, which had cost 323 pounds to build, became the centre of parish life and the surrounding area soon became known as “St. James”.
Designed somewhat in the Gothic Revival style, the church originally included a tower on its west end, which may have been used as a look-out in 1869, during the time of the Riel Rebellion.
Rev. Taylor served for fifteen years in this church, during the time of feared battles with the Sioux and the dying out of the buffalo. He opened a Sunday school in 1851 which he and his wife helped to run and established a lending library in the parish. Rev. Cyprian Pinkham arrived to take his place in 1867 as Rev. Taylor retired in ill health to England later that year. Taylor died just six years later at the age of 53.
A parish school had been built in 1860 near the church and then replaced by a larger school in 1869 during the time that Rev. Pinkham served there.
Immediately upon his arrival in 1868, Pinkham observed, in his unpublished autobiography, that nearly three miles from the little, scattered town of 150 people at the junction of the rivers, there was a “fairly good church”, built of oak logs and a five-roomed parsonage also built of logs. The parishioners, he noted, resided mostly along the north bank of the Assiniboine River between the little town and Sturgeon Creek and were mostly members of the Church of England.
Marrying Jean Anne Drever, the daughter of Scottish settlers who had grown up in the area, soon after his arrival, they settled into the parsonage and began their family, serving the parish for close to thirteen years. Rev. Pinkham later became the first superintendent of education for Protestant schools in Manitoba.
The little church required improvements in 1871 such as the removal of its original tower which proved to be too cumbersome and heavy for its foundation.
More repairs were required in 1879, including new windows, new siding, plastering and painting, as well as new furnishings, and they cost the parishioners $1,500. The congregation had apparently ceased attending during the winter months due to the increasingly cold temperatures in the church.
Often in need of repair, the church served the parish for close to seventy years. Finally, in 1922 a new and larger church was required and was completed in November of that same year resulting in the building which exists to this day at 195 Collegiate Street.
This “new” church includes many beautiful stained glass windows which tell the story of Christ’s life as well as some designed and created by Winnipeg’s renowned artist Leo Mol. It is currently used for regular worship throughout the year.
Though the original church was condemned in 1936, annual services were still held on the cemetery grounds of the church in keeping with the spirit of the original land grant which required that at least one service a year be held.
Fortunately, the old log church did not meet the fate of other, similar historic structures in Winnipeg, for it was restored in 1967 by the then city of St. James, as a Canadian Centennial project and rededicated later that year.
It was designated as a provincial heritage site in 1978 and again in 1998 due to changes to the system.
The old church retains its simple, rough, dark, log interior and still has an original bison hide kneeler which sits under a window dedicated to Neil Henderson, the son of an original Scottish settler, who had helped in the building of the church.
No longer a quaint and unused reminder of the past, the historic St. James Church is now used in the summer for a regular Sunday worship service as well as for some baptisms, weddings and funerals, and special events.
The cemetery of St. John’s Cathedral in north Winnipeg contains a veritable Who’s Who of Manitoba society.
Source: Gordon Goldsborough
It was in the very heart of the Red River settlement, as Winnipeg was called then, that the first Anglican priest in Western Canada, Rev. John West, arrived from England in 1820. Two years later, this official chaplain to the Hudson’s Bay Company, on land selected by Lord Selkirk, built the first Anglican mission in Western Canada, later to be known as St. John’s Cathedral.
The land upon which this first church was built had been granted to the settlers in 1817 by Lord Selkirk, the area’s founder, for religious and educational purposes. It was also the site where Selkirk had first met with the pioneers he had helped bring out from Scotland to the area in various parties from 1812–1815.
A burying ground had already been established on nearby land by the Scottish settlers shortly after their arrival but it would be eight years until the settlers had a priest and two more years until they had a church where they could worship. The settlers, who were largely Presbyterian, also had to wait another thirty-two years until they had a Presbyterian minister of their own and so worshipped together in the Church of England until then.
Arriving at York Factory on a Hudson’s Bay Company ship and proceeding by company boat brigade to Red River, West arrived in October of 1820 in a settlement that was only in its very early years. With the freezing temperatures in the winter, the mosquitoes and the grasshopper plagues in the summer, as well as the devastating floods, many of the early settlers left during those years, leaving only the hardiest behind. However, during what was to be his short tenure in the settlement, Rev. West found the climate and air of the vast, open prairies to be a healthy one, perhaps compared to the ancient and crowded streets of England.
Born in 1778 in England, West had been ordained a priest in 1806. He spent 15 years in various curacies in England before being appointed chaplain to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Arriving in 1820, at the age of 42, he began to minister to the ethnically diverse population of the settlement which included some Ojibwa and northern Cree families and the wives of early fur traders as well as the Scottish settlers and HBC employees.
A grant that West had received from the Church Missionary Society in England was not only for the purpose of building a church but also a school and dormitory for the children of the officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company. While the church missionary organization was interested mainly in spreading Christianity throughout the British Empire and to the aboriginal people, the HBC simply wanted to provide the supports of church and parish life to its officers, men and their families.
So with the support of both, an unpretentious wooden structure was built by West in 1822. The roughly hewn log building was only twenty feet wide and approximately 60 feet long and possessed a single spire. It was situated then at the southeast corner of the present St. John’s Cemetery and served as a church as well as a small school building.
West returned to England in 1823 and was succeeded by Rev. David Thomas Jones, who was considered by George Simpson, then Governor of the HBC’s Northern Department, to be a great acquisition. Rev. Jones, born in 1796, became a priest in 1823, the same year he sailed across the ocean on the Prince of Wales to Canada to temporarily relieve John West.
Although the old log church had managed to survive the huge flood of 1826 it began to gradually deteriorate and so was soon replaced under the guidance of David Jones by a second church, this one built of stone. Built on the site of the present Cathedral, at 135 Anderson Avenue, the opening of the “Red River Church” was officially celebrated on 26 November 1833.
Joined by Rev. William Cockran in 1825, Jones worked to modify the Anglican liturgy to better accommodate the Presbyterian settlers who still awaited clergy of their own but continued to worship in the Anglican church. The tiny church thus became the centre of community life, outside of Upper Fort Garry, in the settlement during those early years.
An early settler named Alexander Ross described Jones at that time as both intelligent and kind, and as someone who was idolized by the community. In 1828, Jones took a leave of absence and journeyed to England where he married Mary Lloyd.
Returning in the fall of 1829, along with his wife, he resumed his duties and soon proposed the idea of a boarding school near the church for the sons of the Hudson’s Bay officers. Construction of this school, the first English-speaking school in the settlement and later known as Red River Academy, was begun in 1832.
As the officers also wished their daughters to be educated, a female seminary was also set up in the Academy. Mrs. Mary Lowman and John Macallum arrived in 1833 to teach at the new school. Mary Jones, the minister’s wife, also taught in the Academy. The Red River Academy was looked upon as a credit to the country by Governor Simpson and flourished over the years.
Rev. Jones and his wife had six children during this time, but tragically, in 1836, Mary Jones died following childbirth. Grief-stricken and no longer able to carry out his duties, the Reverend left for England with his young family in 1838 and later died in Wales in 1844 where he had been serving as rector.
The Academy was soon purchased by the HBC and then later sold to Jones’ successor, John Macallum.
Born in Scotland, Macallum had arrived as a schoolteacher in 1833. Three years later he married Elizabeth Charles, one of his students, with whom he had two daughters. He became Schoolmaster upon Jones’ departure, purchasing the school in 1841, for 350 pounds.
Ordained a priest in 1844, he became assistant chaplain to HBC and was assigned to St. John’s. He firmly believed in strengthening and advancing the education of his students but apparently was also well known for employing the rod during his time at the Academy.
Suffering from an attack of jaundice in the summer of 1849, John Macallum never recovered and died in the settlement in 1849. Shortly after, his grieving wife and their two daughters left for Scotland to live with her father there.
Although the parish had been served briefly by West, Jones, William Cockran and John Macallum, the Red River Academy began to languish after Macallum’s death and it was Bishop David Anderson who was to revive it and leave a mark on the growing community.
Born in London, England in 1814, he was appointed the first bishop of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land in 1849, which included at that time all lands draining into Hudson’s Bay. He would serve as Bishop of Rupert’s Land and HBC chaplain for about 15 years.
As he was a bishop, the “Red River Church” or “Upper Church” as it was known then, soon became a Cathedral and was consecrated as the first Anglican Cathedral in 1853. It was then that it was given the name of St. John’s Cathedral and subsequently the area surrounding the cathedral later became known as St. John’s.
Arriving at Lower Fort Garry in the fall of 1849, Bishop Anderson, a widower, and his three young sons, as well as his sister, Margaret, had journeyed seventeen long weeks by sea and by canoe to get there. The bishop would have been 35 years of age when he arrived to find that the territory to which he was assigned was vast, and a formidable land to travel. The settlement, at this time, was still a remote, isolated, agricultural community, with no village of “Winnipeg” as yet, just muddy stretches of prairie that were difficult to negotiate. The area did not even have a newspaper of its own at this point.
The stone church that Anderson found upon his arrival was apparently propped up by timbers and falling into disrepair. His congregation was divided because many of the Scottish Presbyterian settlers longed for a church of their own and were soon to have their wish, soon after Presbyterian minister, John Black, arrived in 1851.
Purchasing the Red River Academy from his predecessor, John Macallum, Anderson moved with his young family into one wing of the Academy, introducing a much more advanced program of classical studies, modern languages and mathematics and began to build a library.
The school, which he renamed St. John’s Collegiate School, also prepared students for the ministry. During Anderson’s time at the college, twenty clergymen were ordained, eight of whom were natives of the northwest. Two students also went on to further studies, at Cambridge and the University of Toronto, and he was remembered fondly by his former students.
Some nine years after the flood of 1852 had done further damage to the cathedral and to other buildings on the site, a new Cathedral was needed, and the cornerstone for a third structure was laid in June 1862. Stone from the second structure was used in the third building which was also simple in its design, looking much like a quaint, English countryside church.
Anderson sought to establish additional Church of England missions outside the Red River settlement and soon new churches were built throughout the diocese. Where there had been five clergy in the diocese upon Anderson’s arrival, there were twenty-two when he left. Parish schools were also established in the overall plans for each new church.
Many years later, St. John’s Collegiate joined with another school to become St. John’s Ravenscourt. The cathedral was not to be replaced for another 64 years.
Bishop David Anderson returned to England in 1864 where his three sons attended boarding school, but he never ceased being concerned and involved with the Red River settlement, raising funds whenever he could for the diocese. After a lengthy illness, Anderson died in Bristol, England in 1885 at the age of 71.
Robert Machray succeeded David Anderson as bishop after he left the Red River settlement in 1864. Born in Scotland in 1831, Machray was sent at the age of six to live with his father’s half-brother, a schoolteacher, following his father’s death. Raised by a Presbyterian family, Machray chose to become Anglican in his twenties. Ordained in 1856, he accepted the bishopric of Rupert’s Land in 1865 becoming, at age 34, the youngest bishop in the church during that time.
Arriving in the settlement, in the fall of 1865, he immediately began to reorganize the educational institutions of the church and re-opened the school as St. John’s College in 1866, offering higher education in arts, theology and corporate education. Acting variously as warden, schoolmaster, and headmaster as well as bishop, Machray was also remembered for his use of corporal punishment in addition to his steadfast dedication to public education.
Machray also served during the chaotic time of the Riel Rebellion and subsequent confederation of the Province of Manitoba. Winnipeg became the capital of Manitoba with a population of about 12,000 settlers.
Machray became the first metropolitan of Rupert’s Land in 1875 about two years after the city of Winnipeg was incorporated. He became first Primate of All Canada in 1893. Archbishop Machray’s dream was to build a new St. John’s cathedral but it was not to be realized during his ministry.
Never married, his last years were marked by ill health but he struggled to keep up with his many duties. He gave of his time to the parish and to the diocese for almost 40 years, dying in office in 1904 at the age of 73.
It was during the ministry of Archbishop Samuel P. Matheson that the fourth and present cathedral was built in 1926.
Matheson, born in what is now East Kildonan in 1852, came from a family that was well known as leaders in the community at that time. His grandfather, John Pritchard, one of the early settlers, had worked for the HBC and in 1817 had been farming in the vicinity of present day Henderson Highway and Whellams Lane. Educated at St. John’s College in the settlement, Matheson’s family was Presbyterian, but Matheson was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1876. He served as headmaster of St. John’s College School and as professor at St. John’s College, and also founded Havergal College for girls. He succeeded Robert Machray as archbishop in 1905. In 1909, he was elected to the position of Primate of All Canada—the senior bishop of the Anglican Church in Canada.
Married to Seraphine “Marie” Fortin in 1879, he was widowed and married Alice Talbot in 1906. He had two sons and five daughters.
Plans for the fourth structure were begun in 1911. The project was designed by Matheson to be a fitting tribute to his predecessor, Archbishop Machray, who had devoted so much of his time and efforts to St. Johns’ for so many years. Having grown in leaps and bounds, the population of Winnipeg by 1911, stood at about 142,000 people.
It was hoped that it could be completed in time to coincide with the centenary celebration of Rev. West’s arrival in the west as the first Anglican minister. The lack of operating capital was one of the greatest problems facing the Anglican parishes during the time of both Machray and Matheson, however, and the new cathedral was not completed until 1926. This cathedral used most of the stone from the previous building much of which had been salvaged from the second church. Two stone masons who had worked on the 1862 building also did work on the 1926 structure. A two-storey addition was attached to the northeast corner of the cathedral in 1959, which came to house the Dean’s vestry and office, the Sacristy, the Church office, the choir room and Ministries office.
The present cathedral was designed by Parfitt and Prain of Winnipeg and includes elements of medieval English design with a Norman tower and a barrel-vaulted ceiling, along with gothic arched doors and windows.
The tower houses the bells which came from London, England and which were originally housed in the 1862 cathedral. Stained glass windows throughout the present cathedral portray the likenesses of many notable, historic figures, Saints, and past archbishops, as well as the older cathedrals which previously existed on the site.
A brass eagle lectern given to Archbishop Machray in 1890 is still in place within the cathedral some 120 years later. A historic tablet is also in place near the Great West Window which had originally been put up by students of the Red River Academy in the old “upper church” to honour the memory of Mary Jones, the wife of Rev. David Jones, who helped with the education of the girls in the settlement.
Outside the cathedral, St. John’s Cemetery contains the graves and monuments of many of the earliest Selkirk settlers. The graves of Archbishops Machray and Matheson can be found here. Also, many early pioneers, such as Andrew McDermott, one of Winnipeg’s first businessmen, Lieutenant-Governor John Schultz, part-owner of Winnipeg’s first newspaper, W. F. Luxton, co-founder of the Free Press and many other historic figures are buried in these grounds. The streets surrounding the cathedral pay homage to many of the people involved with the parish as witnessed by such names as Cathedral Avenue, St. John’s Avenue, Anderson Avenue, Church, Machray, Matheson, O’Meara and more.
Originally built to serve the early pioneers and inhabitants of the Red River settlement, the historic St. John’s Cathedral, continues to serve residents of the City of Winnipeg today, through regular services and special events. The cathedral has been a designated heritage building since 2004 and includes the cemetery as part of the site, which actually predates the first church.
The Diocese of Rupert’s Land today is home to some 11,000 Anglicans worshipping in sixty-four parishes as well as three missions. Thirty-one parishes and three missions are found within the City of Winnipeg.
Page revised: 6 October 2019
