St. Anselm Parish
West Chezzetcook NS

The Friends of St. Anselm Church Society has been registered under a new name; St. Anselm Preservation Society. In the near future, our Facebook page will reflect our new name. However, our efforts still remain the name - to have our historical church reopened for
public divine worship. To this end, we are still in the appeal process. Throughout November and December, we have been working with a canon lawyer to prepare our hierarchical recourse to the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court of Justice in the Church. This "contentious administrative recourse" was sent within the timeline as stated in the canon laws of the Church. We hope that our recourse will be accepted for examination; this will take time so please continue to pray for the reopening of our Church.

 

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St. Anselm’s Parish was originally established in 1740. At the time, it consisted of a small building, made of upward standing logs with a birch bark roof, in a square shape. It was no bigger than our current sacristy. It was located closer to the mouth of the harbour then today’s parish, so that the native people could access the church by boat. This was because at that time, the French Expulsion had not occurred and the area was mainly populated by the Natives of the area and their only means of transport was by boat or foot. This is relevant because after the Treaty of Ghent occurred in 1713, only Native peoples were permitted to establish and maintain Catholic mission churches.

After 1755 and the Deportation of the Acadians, a lot of the French people who were released from jails around Halifax and Windsor, Nova Scotia, made their way on the boats to what is now known as Chezzetcook, which was known by many different similar native names, some of which meant ‘land of the clams’.

On July 4th, 1803, Monsignor Pierre Dénaut, who was Bishop of Québec at the time, paid a visit to the small Native church. There he found 224 people, and 130 communicants coming from 45 families. His trip was to celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation with the 29 people who had not received it at that time. He was not pleased with the “run-down shack like” church that he found there. He demanded that the church was repaired and fixed to his specifications, as well as a presbytery be built. He was that serious about it being completed, that he forbade Father Thomas Grace, the Capuchin Monk to celebrate the Masses until it was completed. The people of the community decided instead of repairing the church, they would just build a new one, as the old one was deemed un-repairable. Every family put in approximately three dollars (or what they could give in livestock, or anything of that sort), and a new church was built by the year 1815. It was built further up the inlet, where the present one stands, but unlike our present church, it had faced the cemetery (west), and the front door led to the cemetery. The dimensions were 40' x 32’, on 10’ posts, with a sacristy of 14' x 16’. A year later, in 1816, Father Vincent de Paul Merle built a presbytery next to it that was 24' x 26’, where the present one stands today.

On July 18 and 19th, 1815, Bishop Joseph Octave Plessis of Québec made a visit to Chezzetcook to bless the church, and give it its name. He was brought in on a war sloop, named the “Jane”. The sloop arrived at the entrance of the harbour, and the Bishop and his assistants were put on a small chaloupe that the people of Chezzetcook sent for him. Little did the Bishop know, the sailors that manned the boat out to get the Bishop had been ‘green’ (a sailing term, which means they have little to no experience in sailing). On the way in the harbour, the sailors managed to row the boat up onto a huge breaker and as it tumbled, it unceremoniously dumped the Bishop and all of the passengers and their cargo onto a hidden sand bar. The Acadians and Natives that had been watching the entrance shoved off their large, flat bottomed boat and went and rescued all of the passengers.

That evening, Bishop Plessis and his assistants, Father Mignault and Father Vincent de Paul, a Trappist monk, heard confessions, as well as into the next morning. The people of the community assisted with three Masses that morning. It was on that day, the 19th day of July, 1815 that the name “Ste. Anslème-de-Canterbury” was given to the small parish on the shore of the Chezzetcook Inlet.

In 1849, the congregation of St. Anselm Parish was starting to grow and it was decided that a new addition to the existing church needed to be added. The people got together and they built a large transept, and a new chancel was added on the west and east end of the building, making it the largest church in the diocese.

By 1894, the additions that were added onto the church were just not enough to contain the ever growing population of St. Anselm’s Parish. It was decided by the parishioners of the church that a new church was in order and that they would build it themselves. Every family donated what they could: some donated money, some donated bricks, and some just donated meals and water to the workers who worked to rebuild the centre of their community. The outside of the church was made almost entirely of bricks. Interestingly enough, there once was a brick factory in West Chezzetcook and so almost all of the brick that is part of the church was made from the sand found along the shore. The remaining brick that was put into the church was brought in by ship from Upper Canada, now known as Québec.

Recently in 1960, Father (now Bishop) Austin E. Burke, decided that a new presbytery was in order and he built a new one on where the old one stood. This is the current one that our parish priest lives in, and it was built on the same place the old one was. At the time, it was built with a flat roof. In 1998, Father Johni Mathew had a new tapered roof put on the building, which changed its appearance drastically.

There have been only few modifications to the church since it was built, one including the new stairs and the wheelchair ramp, which was donated in memory of Duane Ervanowitz.

From - St. Anselm's: The Story of a Community Church https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/c4efd8_61220589dd8f41c08aedf1f9a7776475.pdf

By - Dustin Crowell