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soemandI've only been in this church once, on a sad occasion, and didn't know it had been deconsecrated.
The combination of rural population loss, and lower religiosity the church wasn't right-sized for quite some time. It also dates from when travelling a few miles to church, often via horse drawn carriage, had a church in every village.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/deconsecrated-catholic-church-for-250k
The combination of rural population loss, and lower religiosity the church wasn't right-sized for quite some time. It also dates from when travelling a few miles to church, often via horse drawn carriage, had a church in every village.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/deconsecrated-catholic-church-for-250k
(no subject)
Date: 2023-03-27 01:55 pm (UTC)I hope someone finds a good purpose for it! I know some former churches that have been turned into performance venues, but if the declining attendance of it as a church was partly due to there just not being enough people in the area, that might not work out either.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-03-27 08:38 pm (UTC)It will be interesting. A few churches locally, in the city I live now, have gone to be “wedding venues” without the fixings.
The community where that church is in the process of loosing a few of them — including the largest wooden one on North America.
Texted a friend and she mentioned that one needs a roof, stones repointing, and maintenance. The once I was in there for a funeral they shut off the heaters halfway through, and you could still see your breath.
It looks more impressive from the outside. My wife suggested we could castle it…
For music venues, the university 10km down the road has existing relationships—for example https://www.debutatlantic.ca/ usually drops by on their tours.
The underlying cause is both fertility and move to the city. Families when this was built could have up to 6–8 children. You still see it in obituaries, when they list the siblings of the older folks. The transition to families of 1-2 kids and them moving for work elsewhere has the population dropping by 1% per year, ish—that has been consistent for the last two decades. And that doesn’t include the loss of religion.