Ecclesiastical Kinship at Pointe-de-l’Église: A Case of Church and Community Formations

Currently, as of summer 2025, the former Église Sainte-Marie in Nova Scotia's municipality of Clare faces the threat of possible demolition. Amid declining church attendance among Canadians generally, hundreds of communities across the country have faced such a predicament in recent decades. Underutilized and decaying church buildings have been demolished and replaced by other structures. I suggest here that the case of Sainte-Marie is distinct, setting it apart from many churches due to the historical circumstances from which it emerged. Built by the region’s Acadians in 1903–05, Sainte-Marie no longer functions as a church and has been deconsecrated. Now in a state of deterioration, the building is closed to the public. It has long been regionally acknowledged as the tallest wooden church in North America. Sainte-Marie héritage et développement has been organized to preserve this building and mark its cultural significance.[1]

Église Sainte-Marie. Photo by Colby Gaudet.

Sainte-Marie at its completion in 1905. On the left is the earlier church (c. 1829) that the larger structure replaced. Source: Musée Église Sainte-Marie.

Photo by Colby Gaudet.

            Constructed entirely of wood, the former Église Sainte-Marie is a massive and impressive structure for its rural setting. Upon seeing its silhouette against the horizon, an observer wonders: what led to such a large church being designed for this small fishing village? – a village much like other Acadian villages dotting the Maritime coast. As its name indicates, Pointe-de-l’Église has long been the site of a Roman Catholic church, and the village dates to the establishment of Acadians there in 1772. This point on the coast of St. Mary’s Bay has been an important ecclesial locus whose foundational history merits some reflection as the fate of its former parish church (and, some would say, an Acadian landmark) remains uncertain. The Sainte-Marie structure is valuable for its architecture, but it’s also noteworthy for the history of the Catholic congregation it signals.[2] As an early ecclesiastical centre, Pointe-de-l’Église was the site of the only Catholic church in the region – that is, until the development of other parishes in Digby County by the mid-nineteenth century.[3]

            The first church at La Pointe was a small chapel built in 1786 when the village had no priest. This church was occasionally visited by passing missionaries and would have drawn Catholic laypeople from the greater region, including Acadians, Mi’kmaq, and some Black, Irish, and Scottish congregants. More than a decade later, at the arrival of the region’s first resident priest in 1799, this initial church was dilapidated and in need of replacement. Two successively larger churches stood at La Pointe during the nineteenth century until the current structure was built at the turn of the twentieth century to cater to a growing community. For many of Clare’s Acadians today, the history of Pointe-de-l’Église is inextricably connected to the career of its first missionary, Jean-Mandé Sigogne.[4] A political refugee of the French Revolution, Sigogne arrived in Clare from Europe when he was thirty-six years old. He spent the rest of his life in this community, performing the duties of a parish priest until his death in 1844. During my PhD, I conducted extensive research about this priest, and I analyzed the significant ties he forged with the local Acadians and Mi’kmaq.[5] As one of the few literate people amid a rural populace that had little opportunity for formal education, Sigogne’s spiritual and temporal influences ran deep in the village where he lived in a presbytery next to the church. His patrimonial legacy can tell us about his ties to Acadian and other families at a foundational period of the community’s history.

Will of Jean-Mandé Sigogne, 1842. Source: NSA, Digby County probate.

Sigogne died at age eighty-one, following a stroke he had while celebrating Mass in the Sainte-Marie church. Considering his declining health, he had already drafted a will to dispose of his material possessions. Over the course of his tenure in Nova Scotia, he had become a godfather to several children in the parish for whom he provided in his will. Sigogne’s relationship to these godchildren was distinct considering his clerical status – he was avowedly unwed and celibate, with no offspring of his own. The bonds between Sigogne and his godchildren were evident in his final testament, where he centred them as heirs. Such social, legal, and spiritual ties between priest and godchildren structured what I call ecclesiastical kinship. While all baptized Catholic children had godparents, only some children had the distinction of having a clerical godfather. The following examples demonstrate how deeply some Catholics in Clare regarded Sigogne. First, to help us understand the meaning of such figurative kin dynamics, we can turn to the work of one historian of early modern Spain who has analyzed why a Catholic family might select a priest to be a child’s godfather. Pragmatically, such a choice “presented the opportunity to establish an official friendship with socially elevated individuals.”[6] In such a rural district as Clare (comprised of approximately 120 Catholic families in 1800),[7] having the region’s only priest as a godfather could be advantageous in a district generally characterized by illiteracy and economic subsistence. As the parish registers of Clare haven’t survived, we can’t know how many godchildren the priest had in the parish overall. However, from the surviving registers of the Sainte-Anne parish in Argyle, I’ve counted 23 instances when Sigogne served as a godfather in that parish during his lifetime. The four godchildren in his will thus represent a certain, and possibly favoured, few.

            Sigogne wrote his will in August 1842, two years before he died, having “some earthly possessions in this part of the World at my free disposition.” Further to his moveable goods (including a sizeable library), he owned two parcels of land in Clare, the largest being 444 undeveloped acres in the forested interior, behind the village of Saulnierville. Among his final wishes, the priest ordered this lot “to be divided by the middle in two equal parts … each part shall be divided lengthwise in five small Lots or parcels of equal size.” Some of these lots he transferred to godchildren, while intentionally leaving others unassigned. “The North division,” Sigogne left “unto Ambrose Mandetus Thibaud … my godchild the son of Peter Thibaud and Elizabeth Belenfant of Clare.” This child, named after the priest (Mandé or Mandetus), was nine years old at the time. Sigogne then granted a lot to parishioner Daniel Harrington and a third lot to “John Mandet son of said Daniel Harrington my godchild.” Another namesake, John was born in 1831. His Irish father had first lived in the nearby district of Yarmouth before moving to Clare with his wife, Margaret King, a woman of Loyalist background. Sigogne gave the next lot “unto my little nephew and Godchild Theodore Vincentius Bonnenfant.” Twelve years old, Théodore was the son of Sigogne’s own nephew, François-Louis Bonnenfant, a tanner, who, as a young man, had come to Nova Scotia from France at the invitation of his uncle and subsequently married into the Acadian community. In making these bequests to young godsons, Sigogne wished to provide for their well-being by giving each of them a modest landed estate. Because the lands bequeathed were interior lots, the priest even ordered that a new road be cleared, giving his heirs future access to this land. He also gave a lot to Louis-Quentin Bourque, his executor and former student, “indemnitium of the trouble and expenses he may be at on that account.”[8]

Presbytery at Pointe-de-l'Église. From Dagnaud, Les Français du Sud-Ouest de la Nouvelle-Écosse.

            Sigogne bequeathed his other parcel of land (apart from the above-mentioned subdivision) to his nephew, including “in full right the Hypotheque or Mortgage deed from the late John Blin.” This was declared “on the express condition that the old Julian Blin, who sold that Land to his late son John Blin, shall not be dispossessed of the Land or disturbed thereon by my heirs or legates during his natural life.”[9] While Sigogne wanted to provide for his nephew’s growing family, he also wanted to ensure that the elderly Blin (who had held a mortgage from the priest before selling it to his son) would not be evicted. Blin was a distinct figure in the parish as he was not an Acadian. Like Sigogne, Julien Blin had been born in pre-revolutionary France. He came to North America with the French Royal Army under the Comte de Rochambeau and fought in the American Revolutionary War. In 1783, he was discharged at Philadelphia and thereafter came to Nova Scotia by way of Boston, where he had married an Acadian woman. The couple settled in Clare with the returning Acadians.[10]

            Considering their shared age, expatriate French origins, and experiences of Atlantic revolutions, it’s possible Sigogne felt a particular civic kinship with Blin, precipitating the priest’s willingness to contract a mortgage with the former soldier.[11] The records of the Sainte-Marie fabrique reveal that Julien was (at least marginally) literate and a central figure in the parish at the time of Sigogne’s 1799 arrival. Blin’s signature stands out on several acts in the register among dozens of illiterate Acadian men who could only make their mark – an ‘X’ – on the parish documents.

            In his will, Sigogne also granted two lots in the subdivision to women: one to his adult goddaughter, the other to a sixteen-year-old adopted girl. He gave a portion “unto Osithe the wife of Frederick Dugast, who lives in the back lands of Meteghan Village.” Born in April 1798, Osithe was the daughter of Acadians Joseph Boudreau and Anne Bastarache who had asked Sigogne to be the girl’s godfather when they brought her to be baptized in August 1799 – being just weeks after the priest’s appointment to the district. He shared the godparenting role with the girl’s older sister. Sigogne thus watched his goddaughter grow up in the community, herself marrying in the 1820s and becoming a mother. In granting Osithe some of his land, the priest secured her family’s continued growth. Sigogne also conveyed a lot “unto Julia-Anna McCaffrey an adopted child by me.” Born in May 1826, McCaffrey, while not an Acadian, was “an orphan girl born however of a lawful wedlock (of this I have proofs in writing).”[12] The parenthetical comment reveals Sigogne’s worry that some might claim the girl was born illegitimate, or even fathered by the priest. In actuality, Sigogne had ‘adopted’ Julie-Anne rather dubiously from a group of Mi’kmaq during a Corpus Christi feast at Pointe-de-l’Église.

McCaffrey. From Dagnaud, Les Français.

In her later life, about 1900, McCaffrey recounted the story of her adoption to a French priest and ethnographer named Dagnaud working at Collège Sainte-Anne. Dagnaud published her story in his own words. According to McCaffrey, some Catholic Mi’kmaq from the nearby reserve at Bear River had come to celebrate the church feast, setting up camp at La Pointe and bringing Julie-Anne with them. She was not of their nation, but had been adopted by the Bear River Mi’kmaq, being an orphan of an Irish couple in Saint John, New Brunswick. How precisely the Mi’kmaq obtained the girl is unclear, but they had evidently taken her in as their kin. Upon seeing this arrangement, Sigogne had determined to take the child from the Mi’kmaq and raise her as his own, giving her a charitable education. The Mi’kmaq, “aux ouvertures qui lui furent faites, refusa net de se séparer de l’enfant.” Sigogne then “se décida à faire par la force ce que la diplomatie était impuissante à obtenir.” As several Acadian men “étaient sous les armes pour la procession de la Fête-Dieu,” the priest “les fit ranger, arme au bras, autour de la tente de l’Indien, et donne l’ordre à l’un des hommes présents de s’emparer de la petite fille.” Thereafter raised in the Catholic presbytery, McCaffrey maintained her ties to the Mi’kmaq who visited the Sainte-Marie parish. She recalled: “J’avais appris le Micmac avec le Père [Sigogne], et lorqu’il se présentait des Indiens pour êtres instruits, si le Père était absent, je le remplaçais auprès d’eux, et j’étais toute fière d’être leur catechiste. Je me rappelle encore mes prières en Micmac.”[13] An elderly Julie-Anne also reminisced about living in the presbytery with the priest’s “little nephew,” Théodore, including a playful story of him catching mice in the church sacristy. These children, and several others by turn (including Louis-Quentin Bourque, who had been the priest’s leading pupil), were raised in the presbytery by an Acadian woman named Scholastique Bourque (Louis-Quentin’s aunt). Together with the priest, this domestic collective in Scholastique’s charge lived beneath one roof and formed a rather unorthodox ecclesiastical family. Upon reviewing Sigogne’s records that document this arrangement (a catalogue of families the priest kept), Dagnaud described the unit as “la famille presbytérale.”[14]

            Next door to the presbytery, Marguerite Bourque, Scholastique’s sister, ran a small convent as an informal “mère abbesse.”[15] In the absence of any congregations of Catholic nuns in western Nova Scotia at the time, the Bourque sisters had taken secular vows under Sigogne’s supervision and with the permission of the Vicar General at Halifax. Secular vows were different from nuns’ typical vows that required them to remain cloistered within convent walls. Secular vows permitted Catholic women to devote their lives to religious service by performing charitable acts out in the world, such as helping the poor and sick. This small convent at Pointe-de-l’Église was known as the Maison de Sainte-Marthe, evidently drawing inspiration from the biblical story of Martha and her ministry of practical service. Such an informal sisterhood was possible considering the remote rurality of Clare, far from any large, formally organized Catholic institutions. In 1834, Sigogne deeded to “Margaret and Scholetta Bourque both Sisters,” the portion of his land on which stood their convent and farm. It was noted in the deed that the lot, "lying and being in the Township of Clare," was "contiguous to what is called there La point del’eglise." The priest gave the Bourque sisters this land as a gift, “in consideration of the long Services, kind and constant attention … and of some wages due unto them by me.” The sisters were to possess the “dwelling House, Barn, Stables, [and] Sheep house … during their Natural lives.” The property was “intended for the Support of four persons at least who [are] retiring from the world to keep a life of Celibacy of the same sex as the grantees.” While the Bourque sisters never constituted a formal sisterhood, they were granted the right to sell “the premises to the head Sister of such a community or society of Women.” Sigogne warned that “the premises should by no means become hereditary in any Family or Families of the grantees.” Other Bourque sisters also lived for a time at the Maison de Sainte-Marthe, reflecting the depth of the family's connection with the priest. Rosalie Bourque, the widow of Armand Robichaud, lived at the convent in her later years, and Charlotte Bourque, who remained single, lived and died there. How long the convent lasted as the Maison de Sainte-Marthe is not clear. In 1867, the Sisters of Charity of Halifax established a convent and school at Pointe-de-l'Église, thus initiating the presence of a formal congregation of female religious.[16]

While not a biological father, Sigogne thus had figurative sons and daughters among the Catholic parishioners he served. The bonds between these people, their families, and the priest derived from multiple factors – from the consensual agreements of godparenthood, to the voluntary vows of religious vocation, and to coercive forms of adoption typical of nineteenth-century clerical relations with Indigenous people.[17] In all, according to a Catholic worldview, the priest was the figurative shepherd to all in his flock, and Pointe-de-l'Église was a site where the once-dispersed Acadians were able to congregate – if still under the conditions of anti-Catholic penal laws. Sigogne forged important connections with particular Acadian families, such as the Bourques, several of whose members lived in the presbytery and convent at La Pointe, participating in a kind of ecclesiastical kinship that stretched the usual notions of family. Such ecclesial ties were important for a rural Catholic community as Clare's Acadians, who, in the early 1800s, were in the process of re-settlement following their unfortunate period of collective dispossession and displacement.

Bourque genealogical notes. From George Stayley Brown's Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (1888). According to Placide Gaudet, it was Jean Bourque and his wife Marie Rose Surette who first hosted Sigogne in 1799. As there was yet no presbytery in the Sainte-Anne parish, the couple lodged Sigogne in their home for several weeks before he travelled to St. Mary's Bay. The priest had been transported to Argyle from Halifax by the couple's son, Basile Bourque, aboard the young man's fishing vessel. As the first Acadian family Sigogne met, the Bourques evidently built a lasting relationship of respect with the priest. The Bourque daughters would have been girls and young women when they first met their family's clerical guest. See Placide Gaudet, “Unknown Yet Prominent, Some of the Acadian Pioneers of Historical and Picturesque Clare, Digby County,” The Halifax Herald, 10 November 1897.

[1] “Fight to Save North America’s Tallest Wooden Church,” CBC News, 3 January 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUNfWoSkVeg. The structure has been "recognized as the largest and tallest wooden church in North America" since at least 1980. See Genevieve MacCrae, "Continent's largest wooden church to mark 75th anniversary," The Chronicle Herald, 25 February 1980. In 1960, the church was called "the largest wooden building in Canada," see "Big Church Building is Tourist Attraction," The Chronicle Herald, 15 July 1960. On declining church attendance in Canada broadly, see Brian Clarke and Stuart Macdonald, Leaving Christianity: Changing Allegiances in Canada since 1945 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). While I grew up in the Annapolis Valley, my own connections to Clare come through my paternal family. My grandparents and great-grandparents lived in Petit Ruisseau and Grosses Coques, and several generations of my ancestors are buried in the cemetery at Pointe-de-l'Église. My great-grandmother lived into my lifetime, and I recall visiting her with my parents when I was young. She lived in the Foyer Évangeline retirement apartments across the road from Église Sainte-Marie. From the window of her living room, I remember looking at the tall steeple of the imposing church. I remember visiting the museum in the church and, with my dad, lighting novena candles in memory of my grandmother (who was married in the church in 1947, who died in the 1950s, and was buried in the parish cemetery).

[2] I suggest we think of Pointe-de-l’Église as a foundational Roman Catholic ecclesial locus in the province, much like Antigonish in eastern Nova Scotia; see, Peter Ludlow, Disciples of Antigonish: Catholics in Nova Scotia, 1880–1960 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022); and A.A. Johnston, A History of the Catholic Church in Eastern Nova Scotia (Antigonish: St. Francis Xavier University Press, 1960). We might think of Pointe-de-l’Église as a Catholic parallel to Antigonish, as each was a key rural site of administrative, ecclesiastical, and intellectual activity outside the urban centre of Halifax. Each dates to the period of Nova Scotia’s anti-Catholic penal laws, and each was the location of a nineteenth-century Catholic college. Antigonish was characteristically anglophone and Scots-Irish, while Pointe-de-l’Église was francophone and Acadian. On the history of Collège Sainte-Anne, see René LeBlanc and Micheline Laliberté, Sainte-Anne: collège et université, 1890–1990 (Pointe-de-l’Église: Presses de l’Université Sainte-Anne, 1990). On Sainte-Marie's construction and architecture, see Albert Dugas, "Léo-Jean Melanson, bâtisseur de l'église Sainte-Marie de la Pointe-de-l'Église," and Luc Noppen, "L'église Sainte-Marie, monument du métissage de modèles bretons et des savoir-faire acadiens," in Port Acadie: Revue interdisciplinaire en études acadiennes, nos 10-11-12 (Spring-Fall 2007): 143–175.

[3] Catholic churches were constructed at Meteghan in 1817, Digby in 1834, Plympton in 1838, Corberrie in 1841, and Saint-Bernard in 1855. 

[4] See Gérald Boudreau, Le père Sigogne et les Acadiens du sud-ouest de la Nouvelle-Écosse (Montreal: Éditions Bellarmin, 1992); and Pierre-Marie Dagnaud, Les Français du Sud-Ouest de la Nouvelle-Écosse: Le R.P. Jean-Mandé Sigogne Apôtre de la Baie Sainte-Marie et du Cap de Sable, 1799–1844 (Besançon: Libraire Centrale, 1905).

[5] My first book, Sacramental Communities: Kinship, Society, and Politics in the Catholic Atlantic, is based on this research and is currently in review with McGill-Queen’s University Press for publication in 2026.

[6] Antonio Irigoyen López, “Ecclesiastical Godparenthood in Early Modern Murcia,” in Guido Alfani and Vincent Gourdon, eds., Spiritual Kinship in Europe, 1500–1900 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 83. Also, John Bossy, “Godparenthood: The Fortunes of a Social Institution in Early Modern Christianity,” in Kaspar von Greyerz, ed., Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984), 194–201.

[7] Centre Acadien, Université Sainte-Anne (CAUSA), MG-9, Fonds Jean-Mandé Sigogne, boîte 1, dossier 5, Sigogne to Pierre Denaut, 26 January 1800.

[8] Nova Scotia Archives (NSA), Digby County Probate, A-244, Jean-Mandé Sigogne, 31 August 1842. For the details of these children, see CAUSA, MG-9, Fonds Sigogne, boîte 1, dossier 1, Registre ou Catalogue des Familles, 1823–1829 and 1840–1844. On Bonnenfant, see Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, ed., Le Voyage de Rameau de Saint-Père en Acadie, 1860  (Québec: Septentrion, 2018), 182. François-Louis, born in 1800, was the son of Sigogne’s sister Luce. Louis-Quentin Bourque, also born in 1800, was originally from the parish of Sainte-Anne in Argyle.

[9] NSA, Digby County Probate, A-244, Jean-Mandé Sigogne, 31 August 1842.

[10] Rameau de Saint-Père noted Blin’s origin story during his 1860 visit to Clare; see LeBlanc, ed., Le voyage de Rameau, 182. Also, Placide Gaudet copied documents relevant to Blin’s biography, see Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Fonds Placide Gaudet, Généalogies acadiennes, pp. 274–280.

[11] See Léon Thériault, “Les prêtres réfractaires français en Acadie: un episode de la Révolution française,” Cahiers de la Société historique acadienne 21, nos 2-3 (April-September 1990): 89–122. For wider historical context, see Maya Jasanoff, “Revolutionary Exiles: The American Loyalist and French Émigré Diasporas,” in David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds., The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760–1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 37–58; Wim Klooster, Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History (New York: New York University Press, 2009); Darrell Meadows, “Engineering Exile: Social Networks and the French Atlantic Community, 1789–1809,” French Historical Studies 23, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 67–102.

[12] NSA, Digby County Probate, A-244, Jean-Mandé Sigogne, 31 August 1842. See also, CAUSA, MG-9, Fonds Sigogne, boîte 1, dossier 1, Registre ou Catalogue des Familles, 1823–1829 and 1840–1844; for Osithe Boudreau’s baptismal act, see LAC, FM-9, B-8, vol. 26, Régistre des baptêmes, mariages et sépultures de la paroisse Ste Marie, 1799–1801.

[13] Dagnaud, Les Français, 185–186.

[14] Dagnaud, Les Français, 188.

[15] Dagnaud, Les Français, 179–188; George Stayley Brown, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia: A Sequel to Campbell’s History (Boston: Rand Avery, 1888), 411; Isaiah Wilson, A Geography and History of the County of Digby, Nova Scotia (Halifax: Holloway Brothers, 1900), 351; and A.E. Mombourquette, “Les Couvents Acadiens,” Le Canada Français 7, no. 6 (September 1921), 13.

[16] NSA, Digby County Registry of Deeds, Land Transactions Register, Book 12, p. 330; Mary Olga McKenna, “An Educational Odyssey: The Sisters of Charity of Halifax,” in Elizabeth Smyth, ed., Changing Habits: Women’s Religious Orders in Canada (Ottawa: Novalis, 2007), 73. For a well-known secular rule, one that Sigogne may have used or adapted for the Bourque sisters, see “Rules of the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Sick Poor,” in Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac: Rules, Conferences, and Writings, in Frances Ryan and John Rybolt, eds., (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 167-193. Also, Susan Dinan, Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France: The Early History of the Daughters of Charity (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006).

[17] While Julie-Anne was not Indigenous, she was forcibly removed from a Mi’kmaq family.