Thursday Doors – April 13, 2017

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing it, between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time), by using the blue link-up button below. 

Église Sainte-Rose-de-Lima, Laval

Last week I took you along on our afternoon doorscursion around the lovely little district called Vieux Sainte-Rose in the city of Laval, just north of Montréal.

This week I thought we’d look at their grand 160 year-old church, Église Sainte-Rose-de-Lima.

In March of 1740 at the request of the residents of the new settlement at Ste-Rose, the Governor of New France, Gilles Hocquart, authorized the founding of a new parish for the area.

After the arrival of their first priest in 1745 a small church was built on the shores of the Milles-Iles river a few kilometers from the site of today’s church.

Made of wood, this first church burned to the ground in 1766. Rebuilding was stalled mostly due to bickering between the parishioners and the archbishop for the region, who insisted on merging their parish with another one about 18 kilometers (11 miles) away.

After the resignation of the archbishop, and having gone almost 20 years without a local church, things finally started looking up the residents of the village. In 1788 the land on the current site was donated to the parish and construction of a stone church began almost immediately.

By 1850 the population of the area had outgrown the smaller stone church and plans were readied to build the current version with construction between 1852 and 1856.

The design is in the neoclassical style that was typical of many 19th century Catholic churches built in New France, with this one even using locally quarried stone.

The building has undergone a number of renovations and upgrades over the years and it was awarded protected building status under the provincial heritage building program in 1974.

Next time we visit the area I’ll try to get in to take a peek inside.

As always, thanks so such for visiting 🙂

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