10 Basilicas in Canada

3) St. Mary’s Basilica – Halifax, Nova Scotia

It is the cathedral church of the Archdiocese of Halifax and is the largest Catholic church in the Archdiocese. Consecrated on October 19, 1899, it was made a basilica in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. The St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica boasts the tallest granite spire in North America.

The church has been significantly expanded and altered over time. Originally constructed of wood, it was replaced by a stone structure beginning in 1820 inspired (as were many churches of the day) by Saint Martin in the Fields in London. It was expanded to its present size beginning in 1869, according to designs of Patrick Keely who introduced the Gothic Revival facade and spire. Besides the Gothic features, the spire also includes Norman and Germanic design elements.

The facade and spire are notable for being built entirely of granite. All of the stone was locally obtained, except for the three portals which have a jamb shaft of pink Aberdeen granite. The spire has a height of 189 feet (58 m).

The basilica was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1997.

(Source- Wikiepedia)

4) Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral – Montreal, Quebec

Is a minor basilica in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the seat of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Montreal.

The construction of the cathedral was ordered by Mgr. Ignace Bourget, second bishop of Montreal, to replace the former Saint-Jacques Cathedral which had burned in 1852. His choice to create a scale model of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome was in response to a rivalry with the Sulpician order who had been the feudal seigneurs of Montreal, and with the Anglican Church, both of which favoured the Neo-Gothic style instead. The site also sparked controversy due to its location in the western part of downtown, in a then predominantly English neighbourhood far from the homes of the French-Canadian church-goers.

The first architect, Victor Bourgeau, refused the project after studying St. Peter’s, claiming that it could not be reproduced on a smaller scale. At the time, the Holy See and the Papal States were threatened by the nationalist troops of Victor Emmanuel II, king of Piedmont, who was attempting to assert control over all Italy. The undeterred bishop Bourget replied to these events by sending a total of 507 Canadian Zouaves to defend the Papal territories in Italy, whose names are engraved in gold letters on the marble slabs in the cathedral. Their motto is: “Love God and go your way.” A painting depicting Colonel Athanase de Charette, commander of the Papal Zouaves, was made in 1885 by Lionel Royer. Fr. Joseph Michaud, the chaplain of the Papal Zouave volunteers of Montreal, was sent to Rome to secretly produce a scale model to work from.

Work began in 1875 and the new church was consecrated in 1894 as Saint James Cathedral, after Saint James the Great, the patron of the parish the church served. At the time it was the largest church in Quebec. It was made a minor basilica in 1919 by Pope Benedict XV. It was rededicated in 1955 to Mary, Queen of the World, by Pope Pius XII at the request of cardinal Paul-Émile Léger. (The pope had proclaimed this title for Mary in his 1954 encyclical Ad caeli reginam.)

Between 1955 and 1960, several restoration works have been executed.

On March 28, 2000, the cathedral was designated a National Historic Site of Canada

(Source – Wikipedia)

5) Notre-Dame Basilica – Montreal, Quebec

Built in the Gothic Revival style, the church is highly decorated. The vaults are coloured deep blue and decorated with golden stars, and the rest of the sanctuary is decorated in blues, azures, reds, purples, silver, and gold. It is filled with hundreds of intricate wooden carvings and several religious statues. Unusual for a church, the stained glass windows along the walls of the sanctuary do not depict biblical scenes, but rather scenes from the religious history of Montreal. It also has a Casavant Frères pipe organ, dated 1891, which comprises four keyboards, 92 stops using electropneumatic action and an adjustable combination system, 7000 individual pipes and a pedal board.

In 1657, the Roman Catholic Sulpician syndicate arrived in Ville-Marie, now known as Montreal; six years later the seigneury of the island was vested in them. They ruled until 1840. The parish they founded was dedicated to the Holy Name of Mary, and the parish church of Notre-Dame was built on the site in 1672.

François Baillairgé, an architect, designed the interior decoration and choir 1785-95; facade & vault decoration, 1818.

The church served as the first cathedral of the Diocese of Montreal from 1821 to 1822.

By 1824 the congregation had completely outgrown the church, and James O’Donnell, an Irish-American Anglican from New York City, was commissioned to design the new building. O’Donnell was a proponent of the Gothic Revival architectural movement, and designed the church as such. He is the only person buried in the church’s crypt. O’Donnell converted to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed perhaps due to the realization that he might not be allowed to be buried in his church.

The main construction work took place between 1824 and 1829. The cornerstone was laid at Place d’Armes on September 1, 1824. The sanctuary was finished in 1830, and the first tower in 1841, the second in 1843. On its completion, the church was the largest in North America. It remained the largest in North America for over fifty years. A new pipe organ was built in 1858 by Samuel Russell Warren.

The interior took much longer, and Victor Bourgeau, who also worked on Montreal’s Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral, worked on it from 1872 to 1879. Stonemason John Redpath was a major participant in the construction of the Basilica.

Because of the splendour and grand scale of the church, a more intimate chapel, Chapelle du Sacré-Cœur (Chapel of the Sacred Heart), was built behind it, along with some offices and a sacristy. It was completed in 1888. In 1886 Casavant Frères began building a new 32-foot pipe organ at the church, completing it in 1891. It was notably the first organ with adjustable-combination pedals to be operated by electricity.

(Source – Wikipedia)

6) St. Patrick’s Basilica – Montreal, Quebec

The church is known for its historic links to the Irish Canadian community. St. Patrick’s celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1997. English-speaking Catholics first assembled in Montreal at the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours church in Old Montreal; however, their numbers were swelled by the massive arrival of Irish immigrants around 1817. Initially they were transferred to the Church of the Recollets (the French Franciscans) in 1825, but by 1841 they numbered 6,500, and could no longer be accommodated.

The site of Saint Patrick’s Church was purchased, and construction began in September 1843. What was then the outskirts of the town, on a sloped site overlooking parishioners’ homes in Point St. Charles, Goose Village and Griffintown, Saint Patrick’s seven cornerstones were laid, making it the oldest English-speaking Roman Catholic Church in Montreal. The first mass was celebrated in the church on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1847, and in 1850 Samuel Russell Warren built the church’s first organ. Adélard Joseph Boucher was the organist from 1853–58, Joseph-A. Fowler followed (1868–1908) and was briefly preceded by Benoît Poirier.

(Source – Wikipedia)

7) Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec

“Our Lady of Quebec City”, located at 16, rue de Buade, Quebec City, Quebec, is the primatial church of Canada and the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Quebec, the oldest in the Americas north of the Spanish colonies in Florida and New Mexico.  It is also the parish church of the oldest North American parish north of Mexico and was the first north of Mexico to be elevated to the rank of minor basilica, by Pope Pius IX in 1874.

Located on this site since 1647, the cathedral has twice been destroyed by fire throughout the centuries.

A previous iteration of the church was destroyed during the Siege of Quebec in 1759. It was rebuilt from plans by Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry draughted in 1743. The belltower, however, was designed by Jean Baillairgé, who also oversaw construction. The interior was designed by Jean Baillairgé and his son François from 1786–1822. In 1843, François’ son, Thomas, suggested a reconstruction of the façade to resemble the church of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, resulting in the finest Neo-classic façade in Québec. The cathedral was richly decorated with impressive works of art: baldaquin, canopy, episcopal throne dais, stained glass windows, paintings, and chancel lamp (a gift of Louis XIV).

In 1922 the church was again gutted by fire, this time by the Canadian fraction of the Ku Klux Klan, and restored by architects Maxime Roisin and Raoul Chenevert. Raoul Chenevert added a presbytery beside the Cathedral in 1931-32

In 2014 the cathedral celebrated its 350th anniversary. As part of the celebrations, a holy door was constructed—the second outside Europe and only the eighth in the world. The holy door was opened on December 8, 2013 and remained open until December 28, 2014. It again opened from December 8th, 2015 to November 20th, 2016 for the Year of Mercy after which it was sealed until 2025

(Source – Wikipedia)

8) Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré – Quebec, Canada

A basilica set along the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of Quebec City, and one of the five national shrines of Canada. It has been credited by the Catholic Church with many miracles of curing the sick and disabled. It is an important Catholic sanctuary, which receives about a half-million pilgrims each year. Pillars in the front entrance are covered in crutches from people who are said by the parishioners to have been miraculously cured and saved.

The basilica in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré was initially a shrine to honour Saint Anne. On March 8, 1658, settler Etienne de Lessard donated two frontal acres from the west end of his property to the Catholic Church, so that a chapel could be built. This chapel eventually became the site of the modern-day basilica. The chapel was built to provide a place of worship for the new settlers in the area and to house a miraculous statue of St. Anne. The first reported miracle at the site happened during the shrine’s construction. A man named Louis Guimond was hired to help build the shrine even though he suffered from rheumatism. After placing three stones upon the shrine’s foundation, Guimond was cured of all his ailments. This was followed by other testimonies of healed people, and the shrine soon grew in popularity. Many pilgrims came to the shrine hoping to receive a miracle while others, like Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII and Queen of France, supported the shrine from a distance.

Because of the popularity of the shrine, the building was enlarged several times to accommodate all the pilgrims. In the late nineteenth century, a basilica was constructed around the shrine. In 1876, the first basilica opened for worship. This was destroyed in a fire on March 29, 1922. The present-day basilica was built in 1926 on the site of the prior church.

Architects Maxime Roisin, Louis N. Audet and Joseph-Égilde-Césaire Daoust collaborated on the project from 1923-1931. After the end of the Great Depression, work on the interior resumed in 1937, and was finally completed in 1946.

Pilgrims are attracted from across Canada and the United States. Miracles are still believed to occur at the basilica. Two pillars near the entrance are filled with racks of crutches, canes, braces, and other signs of disabilities. Each item has been left by a pilgrim who reports being healed at the basilica.

(Source – Wikipedia)

9) Basilica of St. John the Baptist –  St. John’s, Newfoundland

The Basilica-Cathedral was the largest building project to its date in Newfoundland history. Construction lasted from the excavation of the ground in May 1839, through the laying of the cornerstone in May 1841, until the completion and consecration on September 9, 1855. At this time, it was the largest church building in North America and remains the second largest in Canada behind Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal.

Built between 1839–1855, the basilica is located on the highest ridge overlooking the city of St. John’s. The church is not oriented on the liturgically correct east-west axis, but faces toward the narrows that form the entrance to St. John’s harbour.

The Basilica-Cathedral of St. John the Baptist is built in the form of a Latin cross and in the Lombard Romanesque style of a Roman basilica. It was designed for Bishop Michael Anthony Fleming by the German architect Ole Joergen Schmidt, though Fleming also seems to have had plans prepared by the distinguished Irish architect John Philpot Jones of Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland, and also consulted with James Murphy, a native of Dublin, Ireland on the final plans for the cathedral. Construction was initially supervised by the Waterford contractor Michael McGrath, but later superintended by stonemason and sculptor James Purcell of Cork, Ireland, who also designed and built a small wooden church, Christchurch, for the community of Quidi Vidi near St. John’s.

Construction took place under the watchful eye of the Irish-born Bishop Michael Anthony Fleming, the Vicar-Apostolic and first Bishop of Newfoundland and later under the eye of his successor, Bishop John Mullock. The Basilica-Cathedral of St. John the Baptist is unusual among North America’s 19th century public buildings in that it was constructed using limestone and granite imported from Galway and Dublin, Ireland, as well as 400,000 bricks from Hamburg, as well as local sandstone quarried from St. John’s and Kelly’s Island in Conception Bay, giving the Cathedral its characteristic grey colour. During its centenary celebration in 1955, Pope Pius XII raised the cathedral to the rank of minor Basilica.

The St. John’s Basilica-Cathedral was contemporary with and part of the great boom in church construction which surrounded the era of Daniel O’Connell and Catholic emancipation in Ireland and Newfoundland. For its day, the St. John’s Basilica was the largest Irish cathedral anywhere outside Ireland. No other Irish building in North America can boast of such intimate influences from or upon Ireland, and no other building had such an international reputation in its day.

The Basilica was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1983, to recognize its architectural uniqueness as one of the earliest North American examples of the Romanesque revival style, and its central role as the spiritual and cultural home of Newfoundland Roman Catholics

(Source- Wikipedia)

10) Notre-Dame-du-Cap Basilica – Trois-Rivières, Quebec

It is the Canada’s national shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary and attracts thousands of pilgrims each year.

The first church in the district of Cap-de-la-Madeleine was a small wooden structure built in 1659. In 1694, the first resident pastor, Father Paul Vachon, established the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary at Cap de la Madeleine. The wooden building was replaced by a fieldstone church in 1720. The hand hewn beams from the wooden church were used in the construction of the new stone church. Canon Vachon died in 1729 and is buried in the church.

For a long time the parish was without a resident pastor and fell into neglect. In 1867, Father Luc Desilets, pastor at Cap-de-la-Madeleine, re-introduced the praying of the rosary and promoted it among his parishioners. A more regular pastoral presence resulted in increased attendance, and a larger church was needed.

Initially, construction of a new church was hampered by the difficulty of transporting material. However, in mid-March 1879, despite it being an unusually mild winter, a small section of the St. Lawrence River froze sufficiently that, by adding additional snow and water, Father Louis-Eugene Duguay, and some parishioners were able to construct a narrow mile-and- a-half long ice bridge. The ice held for a full week and allowed the building material to be hauled across on horse-drawn sledges. The people attributed their success to the intercession of the Blessed Mother. In October 1880 the finished third church was dedicated to Sainte-Marie-Madeleine.

True to a promise made to the Blessed Virgin, instead of demolishing the old stone church, Desilets dedicated it to Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary. The first pilgrimage to the Sanctuary was made on May 7, 1883. Desilets died shortly thereafter, and Duguay became pastor. Janssoone took over the responsibility of managing the shrine, and installed a Way of the Cross. Bronze statues depicted the stations. As the parish work and number of pilgrims increased, they asked the bishop to appoint a custodian to take over the shrine. In 1902, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate became guardians of the Shrine. Beginning in 1906, they installed a Way of the Rosary. The path leads to a series of bronze statues, cast in France, each representing one of the fifteen traditional mysteries of the rosary.

In October 1904, Pope Pius X authorized the canonical coronation of Our Lady of the Cape. In 1964, the present basilica was inaugurated, and the sanctuary officially became a minor basilica. The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate continue to operate the shrine.

(Source- Wikipedia)