Troubled West Chezzetcook church deconsecrated Tuesday

Darren Richard, the former choir director of St. Anselm's Roman Catholic Church, said its closure has left a gaping hole in the community of West Chezzetcook, located east of Halifax.

The parish was deconsecrated — or secularised — Tuesday evening after closing in 2018 due to a mould issue. A bookkeeper allegedly defrauded the church for over a decade, and is scheduled to appear in Dartmouth Provincial Court Monday.

The choir director remembers going up to the choir loft for Christmas and Easter mass when he was younger.

"There would be tons of people just singing," he said in an interview with CBC's Mainstreet Tuesday. "A lot of people [would] just come once a year just to sing."

Richard said the sound of a full choir in the church is "phenomenal."

The original Saint Anselm's Parish was built in Grand Desert by the Acadian and Mi'kmaw community living there in 1740. It was replaced by the current brick building in 1894 after the wooden one in West Chezzetcook, built in 1814, burned down.

"The church evolved over time," said Shirley Lowe, a former choir member. "Everything has a beginning and ours kind of did start in that 1740 timeframe." 

Some Acadian prisoners from the Great Upheaval settled in the Mi'kmaw community in Grand Desert, she said, adding that the community built the original church together, and eventually outgrew it.

Listen to Mainstreet's full interviews with Darren Richard and Shirley Lowe:

"Anybody who has driven by this community [knows] it is [a] landmark," she said.

Lowe said she attended the last mass, on Remembrance Day, before the church closed. 

"I am not going to be the judge of whatever happened," she said. "They indicated that there was a mould problem in the church."

She said she didn't get any warning that the church was going to be closed. "It was like getting a slap in the face."

Decision 'not made lightly'

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth said the decision to close the church was based on "declining attendance, major structural issues with the church building, and financial instability."

"This decision to close was not made lightly and is the result of many many months of conversation, reflection and prayer with the church community, the parish leadership, and Archbishop Dunn and his staff," the statement said.

Some community members have been turning to the television for their spiritual enrichment since then, Lowe said.

"They watch mass on TV every day," she said. "My mother was one of those people and there were many of them that kind of had to resort to that."

She said the closure scattered the congregation.

"It's almost like losing a house and all the family that was in it," she said. 

'No immediate plan' for the building

The church held a deconsecration ceremony Tuesday evening at the community hall across the street. The archdiocese said the parish community will be "having the conversations" about the future of the building and bringing their thoughts to the archbishop.

"There is no immediate plan at the moment for St. Anselm's church building," said spokesperson Aurea Sadi. 

The church's preservation society is considering seeking heritage status for the building.

"[I hope] it will return the church building as a very vibrant part of the community life within this area," Madeline Oldham, the chair of the society, said in an interview with CBC's Mainstreet.