Morinville residents are praising the Lord this week after a local MP dropped by with $250,000 to help fix the town’s most prominent church.
Westlock-St. Paul MP Brian Storseth came to Morinville’s St. Jean Baptiste Church last March 12 with a $250,000 federal grant to help fix the church’s steeple. The grant came from Western Economic Diversification.
St. Jean Baptiste Church is the central landmark of Morinville and a recognized provincial historic resource. Built around 1907, it has previously had repairs done to its roof and windows.
But it’s also showing its age. Wind and the ringing of the bells cause the bell tower to sway, said Simonne Chevalier, a member of the church’s finance committee. The bricks and front steps are cracked, the wood is rotten, and the windows need to be redone.
The parish stabilized the steeple a few years ago, Chevalier said, but learned that they’d need $500,000 to fix it completely. “That’s an enormous amount of bake sales.” But without a fix, the church would eventually lose its steeple.
There were also strict rules on how they could fix the church, Chevalier noted, as it was a provincial historic resource. “You can’t even change a door in there without the approval of the provincial government.”
Chevalier said she approached Storseth about the problem, and he suggested they apply to the federal community infrastructure improvement fund – a program that offers communities up to $250,000 to spruce up public buildings.
The problem was that they had to come up with the matching funds and had just a few months in which to do so, Storseth said. “At that point, they didn’t have any money in the bank.”
The church sold prayer books and teamed up with members of the community to collect donations, Chevalier said, some of which came through a dinner and auction. The resulting People for the Steeple campaign garnered $349,393.62 after six weeks.
Mayor Paul Krauskopf praised town residents for their efforts to preserve this landmark. “The community came together and was able to raise the money in six weeks,” he said. “The feds kind of said ‘oh my goodness, I guess we’d better look at this seriously.’ They didn’t think we’d be able to do it.”
Storseth said he was surprised that the group pulled this off, noting that they actually beat the official deadline by a few months. “This is a community that has always been able to come together when it needs to,” he said. “It’s pretty spectacular what they managed to do.”
This church is over a century old, Storseth said, and is an icon of the community. “It’s one of those things you think of when you think of Morinville.” This grant would help preserve this icon for years to come.
Chevalier thanked Storseth and the federal government for their support. “I am proud of our parish and the community to have come together to raise the necessary $250,000.”
This grant would help improve the church’s corner towers, roof and brickwork, according to a federal press release.
Work on the church is expected to start this April with the erection of scaffolding around the steeple.
