A preservation committee aiming to save the deteriorating structure of Sainte-Marie church in Church Point, N.S., has announced it has exhausted all efforts.
The 117-year-old church is the largest wooden church in North America, and has both national and provincial heritage designations.
Preservation committee president Pierre Comeau told Global News on Wednesday that the original $3-million repair estimate ballooned to $10 million in the nine years the committee was active due to inflation and further deterioration of the structure.
It was unable to raise the funds on the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth’s timeline.
“Even though the church was not in use, they still had some ongoing expenses, they had to have it insured, it has a certain amount of heating in it still and electricity. So they didn’t want those
ongoing expenses to the diocese to be there forever,” Comeau said.
He explained that if the fundraising campaign had been successful, the archdiocese had agreed to transfer ownership of the church to the preservation committee.
“We didn’t have the expertise to develop a national fundraising strategy,” he said.
The archdiocese had recently extended the time limit to raise the funds to Sept. 30.
The church is culturally important to the rural Acadian community of Clare.
“The church was built over a hundred years ago, using plans that came over from France and the foreman who built it was a local man who could neither read nor write, so he had the parish priest interpret the plans,” Comeau said.
“We consider it a monument to the tenacity and versatility of our ancestors who actually built this church.”
In a press release issued on Tuesday, the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth said it is saddened about how this will impact a piece of Acadian history in the region but also acknowledged “the reality of the situation for all involved.”
It also said it would be working with the leadership at the Notre-dame-d’Acadie parish, which the church is a part of, to determine next steps.
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