Edmonton’s oldest Roman Catholic church, St. Joachim’s, celebrates 125 years as a spiritual home, from the earliest missionaries in the 1800s to the present-day Franco-African diaspora.
On Dec. 8, the parish celebrates this rich history and its commitment to maintaining and strengthening the French language and culture in Edmonton.
Archbishop Richard Smith will celebrate Mass with the St. Joachim’s parish community, followed by a reception at the Chateau Lacombe hotel. The event will include French cultural activities, including a performance by the Saint Joachim choir, a performance by La Girondole, a group of dancers who perform traditional French Canadian dances, and a silent auction.
St. Joachim has remained the “mother church” of French-speaking people and the main institutional base of French identity in Edmonton and Alberta since local settlement.
In recent years, the parish has welcomed a large diaspora of French speakers from Africa to Edmonton. They will also be honoured. Fr. Philippe Insoni, pastor of St. Joachim’s, says the theme for the event is “Honouring the past, building the future.”
In 2018, the 119-year-old building was designated a municipal historic site. It was designated as provincial historic resource in 1978.
St. Joachim’s, located in central Edmonton, is one of two francophone parishes in the city.
In recent years has become a home for many immigrants from Africa.
“We were left with a wonderful heritage and I think it should be known,” Sister Dolorèse Déry, the former parish administrator, said in a 2018 interview at the time.
Sister Dolorèse has since retired to her home community in Winnipeg,
Designed by local architect Francis Deggendorfer, the church was built in 1899 in the Gothic style, with traditional round-arch windows and a round oeil-de-boeuf (bull’s-eye) window above the entrance.
Four pinnacles surround the belfry, which houses the original church bell. Etched with the coat of arms of Alberta’s first bishop — Vital Grandin — the bell was originally used for time-keeping.
St. Joachim Parish has also had its share of historic pastors, including the Oblate missionaries Father Albert Lacombe and Father Hippolyte Leduc.
Inside the church, painted glass windows depicting the life of St. Joachim and the saints surround the interior. The stone of the off-white marble altar contrasts with the dark wooden ceiling and archways.
“Within these walls dwells our personal history, our memories,” added Élise Déry, who met and, in 1961, married her husband Aimé. The couple has attended St. Joachim’s since then. Aimé and Élise were both part of the choir. Élise has been a parishioner since she was nine years old. The Dérys will be front and centre when the church celebrates its 125th anniversary.
The original St. Joachim’s mission, housed in a modest house-chapel in Fort Edmonton, was established in the 1850s by the Members of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
By the late 1890s, the congregation had grown to a size that necessitated the building of the church.
The Oblate Provincial House beside St. Joachim’s church was designated as a municipal historic resource in 2004
In 1888, francophones from the parish founded the Saint Joachim Catholic School Board (the first in the province), and two hospitals were built with the support of the Misericordia Sisters and the Grey Nuns, present in the province since the mid-19th century.
Father Leduc began construction of the fourth and final church. Excavation began in the summer of 1898 and the cornerstone was blessed on September 24, 1899.
On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, on December 8, 1899, construction of the new church was sufficiently advanced to be blessed and to celebrate its first Mass.
Since 1901, improvements to the church include: the bell tower, a painting over the main altar and stained-glass windows, a simulated marble high altar, purchasing an organ, and converting the church basement into a parish hall where parishioners regularly gather for activities.
A part of the sacristy was converted to develop the Salon Lacombe, named after Father Alfred Lacombe, and used for meetings of various ministries — another way to honour the past.
In 1959, St. Joachim’s parish celebrated its 100th anniversary. To honour the milestone, the pastor, Father Fernand Thibault, had the painting and varnishing throughout the church renewed.