BIGHORN - Just over a year after the McDougall Memorial United Church burned down in a suspicious fire, the slow and meticulous process of rebuilding the historic site has begun.
BIGHORN - Just over a year after the McDougall Memorial United Church burned down in a suspicious fire, the slow and meticulous process of rebuilding the historic site has begun.
In June, a heritage conservation company will begin assessing the site for materials that can be salvaged, while an archaeologist will complete a dig to better understand the history of the site.
Brenda McQueen, president of the McDougall Stoney Mission Society, said she was thrilled to see the project moving forward.
"It's exciting. I didn't think it would happen this quickly," said McQueen. "It means a lot to me that there's so many people interested in it too."
Dave Chalmers, owner of Chalmers Heritage Conservation Ltd., said his company will likely spend six weeks assessing the site to determine what materials can be savaged and restored, should the 142-year-old church be rebuilt.
"Any heritage building usually goes through three phases," explained Chalmers.
"The first one is the understanding phase, the second one is the planning phase and your third and final phase would be the execution. But before we plan or execute anything we need to understand what we have to work with, mainly what kind of material do we have left that we can restore and use to restore the church."
To do that his company will fully document the building as it stands today before disassembling it to assess the individual logs and determine if they can be salvaged and reused.
"We're going to take it down, photo document it using a condition log and then put everything in storage and put it on hold while we go into the planning phase," said Chalmers, explaining the planning phase can take a year to complete.
"Whatever information we glean from this first phase is going to help them plan the eventual restoration of the church."
His company will also try and salvage the original hardware, square nails and clay daubing, which is the infill material used between the logs.
"We found a lot of original daubing in there, which we'd like to reuse in the build," said Chalmers.
While he would like to see the church restored, he also acknowledged there are other options on the table, including rebuilding the church as it was, building a memorial church with an open metallic structure, building a modern church and/or interpretive centre, or cleaning up the site and not rebuilding it.
"I think anything could happen throughout this process," said Chalmers. "The process is designed to give us as much information as possible, so there is the possibility that it wouldn't be feasible to restore the church. But I think with the right people, with someone like Brenda driving it, and then having the support of the government, whether that's financial support or technical support, this is a great project."
The 142-year-old church burned down during the early morning hours of May 22, 2017.
Police initially deemed the fire "accidental," however, the RCMP confirmed in March they were treating it as an arson investigation.
To get to this point the society has been working closely with Alberta Culture and Tourism because the site was designated a provincial historic resource in 1959.
"For any interventions that we do to the building we put forward an intervention request to the provincial government and that just ensures that all of the work we're doing is in accordance to the standards and guidelines for the conservation of historic places in Canada," said Chalmers.
"Having the Province on board is actually a real blessing because they kind of take a second look at everything and make sure what we're doing is the right intervention for the building."
Beyond providing additional oversight, he said the government department is an invaluable asset for the project because it has a huge breadth of technical knowledge about heritage buildings.
"One could argue one of the reasons that we're restoring this building is because the government had the foresight in 1985 to put together a full set of architectural drawings of the site. In the absence of those drawings, we wouldn't really know what we're restoring, we wouldn't really know what we're working towards. It would be a lot of conjecture," said Chalmers.
Kendra Kolomyja, the lead archeologist for the project, said her team will spend two days at the site to do some mapping and update the records that are on file with the Historic Resources Management Branch for Alberta Culture and Tourism.
"There's been a little bit of archeological work done, but for the significance of the site it's actually not very well understood and not a lot of has been done specifically related to the church," said Kolomyja, who works for Lifeways of Canada.
She said the team will spend one day working outside the church to map some of the buildings and features that are surrounding it and spend the day inside the church to carry out an archeological dig of the church's floor.
"Once the base of the church is cleaned up we're going to be looking at what the structure looks like underneath the church and how it's built," said Kolomyja, adding she personally visited the site before it burned down in 2017.
"Since this is such a large site and there's so many different components of it, understanding the context and chronology of the site and how the church has developed over the years and the different stages of the church are part of what we're going to be doing."
Beyond the actual church, she said her team will also look at the old missionary school, which was originally built beside it.
As an archeologist who studies human history, Kolomyja said she is acutely aware of the controversial nature of the site.
"In terms of this being a place of interaction and meetings between two completely separate worlds, it's really fascinating to look at from that side. But at the same time, I do understand that modern perspective and modern understanding of where this site fits into the larger social context; it's really complicated," said Kolomyja
Built in 1875 by George and John McDougall, European settlers who were members of the Stoney Nakoda community, the church meant many different things to many different people.
For some, the historic church located on Highway 1A just east of Morley, was a symbol of hope and an important part of the history and culture for the MD of Bighorn and Western Canada.
For others, the church brought a residential school to the community, ushering in a period of forced assimilation.
The historical legacy of the residential school system is well documented throughout Canada and it was responsible for stripping Indigenous peoples of their culture, language, traditions and identity. Many Indigenous children were also victims of emotional, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the Catholic priests and nuns which ran the schools.
Despite this dark period in Canadian history, Kolomyja said the project has received support from the local First Nations community.
"I'm really hopeful that the increased attention on the site might generate more interest, which might result in more research opportunities and more opportunities to understand the site," said Kolomyja.
Church offers new summer programs
BIGHORN - The church may no longer be standing, but that hasn't stopped the McDougall Stoney Mission Society from organizing more than a dozen events this summer.
To kick things off, the society has scheduled four events in June, including a botanical walk, talk and picnic on June 2 and a church service on June 10. Later in the month, on June 23, a historian will be on site to answer questions and, on June 30, Dr. Patrick Lightning, who was born in Morley, will host a talk about Indigenous traditions and reconciliation.
"We really want to get people to the site and let them know that even though the church is gone, there's lots of beautiful land," said Brenda McQueen, president of the society. "All the events are free because we want people to see the site, enjoy it and possibly give a donation to the society."
Among the different activities planned for this summer are several Indigenous programs, including a drum making workshop, a powwow and bead making workshop.
Other events include live music and an art exhibit which will showcase local artists from the area, including artists from the Stoney Nakoda First Nation. Several artists from Cochrane are also creating drawings using charcoal from the church, which will be available for purchase, with some of the proceeds going back to the society. For more information about this summer's events including times, visit the McDougall Stoney Mission Society Facebook page or its website at www.mcdougallstoneymission.com.
