Mgr Canoz ad duritiam cordis et pro bonopacis, approuva le plan de l'église et, pendant dix-huit ans, donna au moins deux mille francs par an pour sa construction 1 .
293
by 1855
A bishop, a village, and a childless house
The money came from three places. The bishop carried it longest: for eighteen years Canoz sent at least two thousand francs a year toward the building. The village raised its share out of its own pockets, a little at a time, through seven years. And one family gave in thanksgiving. Christopher Bilderbeck was the European merchant of the village, and he and his wife had been married twenty-seven years without a child; he was past fifty by then, which is the age at which a man stops asking. They asked anyway. They prayed to Our Lady of this church, and before the year was out a son was born to them. Over all of it stood the parish priest: it is to Fr Joseph Grégoire's “persevering energy”, wrote the mission's own chronicler, that “this fine Christian community owes its great church.”
DocumentedThis moment rests on 4 sources.
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In English
“Bishop Canoz approved the plan of the church and, for eighteen years, gave at least two thousand francs a year for its construction.”
What this source establishes
The only figure anyone ever put on this building. The bishop's own biographer: Canoz approved the plan and then “for eighteen years gave at least two thousand francs a year for its construction”. Printed 1891, not a parish book. WINDOWED, and it must stay windowed: this page is the caste history of 1872–76 almost end to end, and the funding sentence is the one caste-free stretch on it.