Église Sainte-Marie towers over the landscape in the small community of Church Point, roughly midway between Digby and Yarmouth in Nova Scotia’s District of Clare. Erected in 1903-1905 by 1,500 local volunteers, it is the largest wooden church in North America at 185 feet or 56.5 metres tall (the height of a 19-storey building!) with each of the 70-foot columns in its nave hewn whole from local trees. Forty tons of rock were placed in the bottom of the steeple to act as ballast against the heavy winds blowing off nearby St. Mary’s Bay. Inside, the high vaulted ceilings nave and 41 stained glass windows imported from France, fill the visitor with a sense of grandeur and awe.
Designed in the French and Romanesque revival styles, construction was overseen by brilliant local master carpenter Léo Melanson, who had previously built Université Sainte-Anne’s main building next door in 1899. While not formally educated, Melanson was able to build Église Sainte-Marie out of wood by converting French architectural plans for a stone structure, and with no other comparable wooden structure in North America to use for reference. In 1944, he received a medal from Pope Pius XII for his work. Beyond its exceptional architectural significance, the monumental church has profound cultural heritage significance for community members, many of whom can trace their ancestry to Acadian families who arrived in the area in 1769 from Massachusetts, having survived the 1755 Acadian Expulsion from Nova Scotia.
When the church closed in 2019, the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth gave the local volunteer group Société Édifice Sainte-Marie De La Pointe until 2021 to raise the funds for deferred building maintenance of $3,000,000 and to find a sustainable use for the vast building. If they raised the funds, the Société had agreed to take on ownership of the building. In 2021 a further fundraising extension was granted, but when that ultimately could not be met the archdiocese deconsecrated the church in November 24, 2023 and put it up for sale in January 2024. This past November, the Municipality of Clare asked the Diocese to repair a finial on the steeple as it was a safety risk, and shortly thereafter, the Diocese put out an RFP for complete demolition of the church in spring 2025. “The day that the wrecking ball would show up would be one of the saddest days of my life,” said Pierre Comeau, head of the former Société Edifice Sainte-Marie de La Pointe, in a 2024 media interview.
To find out more about the building’s history and present visit these links:
Links about the current situation:
Listed on the National Trust for Canada’s Endangered Places List 2024
Église Sainte-Marie: North America’s Largest Wooden Church Faces Demolition
Links about the history and architectural significance:
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=5390
https://archives.novascotia.ca/communityalbums/sainte-marie/
Video and images of the building:
https://baiesaintemarie.com/en/see-and-do/historic-churches/sainte-marie-church
https://archives.novascotia.ca/communityalbums/sainte-marie/results/?Search=
