THE OLDEST ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN EDMONTON

Описание: St. Joachim's Roman Catholic Church is a red-brick church situated on a portion of two lots in Edmonton's Oliver neighborhood. Completed in 1899, the building manifests the strong influence of late-nineteenth-century French-Canadian church architecture. Prominent features of the red-brick church include a symmetrical front facade, gable roof, projecting central tower flanked by shorter corner towers, round-arched windows, and stone keystones, stringcourses, and sills.
n the 1850s, members of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate established St. Joachim's mission at Fort Edmonton and began serving the post's Catholic community in a modest house-chapel. Over the succeeding decades, the parish congregation relocated twice: in 1877 to a church constructed near present-day Stony Plain Road and 122 Street and in 1886 to a new place of worship erected just north of the current St. Joachim's. The church built in 1886 was situated within a block of land purchased by Bishop Vital-Justin Grandin three years earlier as the foundation for a Catholic religious district that came to include two hospitals as well as a rectory, convent, seminary, school, and church.