Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Church Point Nova Scotia


Did you know that the Saint Marie or Saint Mary Church in Church Point Nova Scotia  is the largest wooden church in North America? It is located between Digby and Yarmouth in a village called Church Point. This church was begun in 1903 and it took a couple of years to build. It was built by a self taught carpenter named Leo Melanson  and around 1500 volunteer parisheners. I found Leo in the 1901 census age 32 with a wife and two daughters. Now around the time this church was being built were many Acadian families, in the 1901 census for Church Point, I found some Doucet,Daigle,Melansons,Chiasson,Mius,Dugas,Guidry,Gaudet,Belliveau,Boudreau,
Comeau, Leblanc,Maillet, Pothier,Richard,Thibodeau,Theriault,Saulniers and there were more Acadian names. I am sure many of these people must have been among the volunteers. The church has 41 stained glass windows. What they did not have for the church was imported from France such as the stained glass windows, the the bells . There is story about the paintings on the ceilings, apparently the artist was afraid of heights so before he would climb to paint he would drink a bottle of wine, then he would take a bottle up with him where he painted. Now how would you find this beautiful church? Well if you can find the Evangeline Trail it will lead to it, and the church is on the St Mary's University Grounds.  And if you are interested in the poster above, you can find it along with other church products in my church folder at
http://www.zazzle.com/allicor*    In the meantime ,thank you for stopping by, if you are not following me yet why don't you do so?
Have a great day
Aline

1 comment:

Linda Hughes Hiser said...

We would like to visit Nova Scotia some day....keep all this history and photos coming.