The Five Saint Boniface Cathedrals

From 1818 to 1972, five successive Saint Boniface cathedrals rose at the Red River settlement and its growing colony and city. When the first two Catholic missionaries arrived in 1818, Father Provencher built a modest log structure that served as rectory, church, and boys' school. He soon planned a larger church to meet the colony's spiritual needs and represent the Church in the West; after six years of fundraising and construction, it was completed in 1825, and because Father Provencher had been appointed bishop in 1822, it became the first Saint Boniface Cathedral. As the colony's population grew, Bishop Provencher built a larger stone cathedral completed in 1839, aided by a grant of 100 pounds sterling and Scottish stone masons supplied by Sir George Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company; this twin-towered building was later immortalized in J.G. Whittier's 1859 poem "Red River Voyageur" before fire destroyed it in 1860. In 1862 Bishop Tache began a third, smaller stone cathedral with one bell tower, which served for 45 years until replaced as rapid late nineteenth-century growth made a larger building necessary. After Archbishop Langevin succeeded Archbishop Tache in 1894, construction of a fourth cathedral began in 1905 and was completed in 1908; designed by the Montreal firm of Marchand and Haskell in the Roman-byzantine style, it featured a 25 foot stained glass rosette, seated about 2000 people, and cost $325,000 under the construction leadership of Joseph Senecal, but it too was destroyed by fire on July 22, 1968. Even before its ashes had cooled, reconstruction was underway, and in 1972 a fifth cathedral designed by Franco-Manitoban architect Étienne Gaboury opened within the walls and towers of the previous church, combining the needs of the congregation with preservation of the past.

Manitoba · Canada