Since the pandemic, more and more churches have been added to the list of “changing” places of worship, i.e. religious heritage buildings that are demolished, closed or transformed in Quebec. Data from the Religious Heritage Council’s inventory analyzed by The duty reveal that 16 churches closed in 2022, while 4 fell under the peak of wreckers. The toll now stands at nearly 280 places of worship closed or demolished since 2003 in the province.
Several hundred other religious places have also been forced to reinvent themselves over the past 20 years. Today, there are 385 religious buildings that have been transformed into community centers, libraries, performance halls or even residential buildings. It is therefore a quarter of places of worship (663 of the 2751 buildings listed in 2003) that have since been demolished, closed or recycled for new functions.
On average, around thirty new places have been changing per year since 2016, whereas there were on average around forty per year between 2006 and 2015. However, trends have returned to the rise since the COVID-19 pandemic. 19, particularly for places of worship that must close their doors, according to Isabelle Lortie, heritage advisor for the Quebec Religious Heritage Council.
The closure of a place of worship does not necessarily imply the definitive cessation of its activities, she qualifies from the outset. A church can close temporarily so that transformation work can be carried out there, for example. In the case of 39% of places of worship closed in 2021, a concrete transformation project was proposed to reuse the space. But conversely, no project was known for 36% of the buildings closed that same year.
Closures have certainly increased since the pandemic: 30 places of worship closed in 2020, while half of them were counted the year before. The lack of income during periods of confinement, the drop in the number of practitioners and the costs of maintenance and heating of buildings would explain in particular why the closings of places of worship have accelerated since the health crisis. The trend should also continue, according to the advisor.
“The dioceses had a ten-year vision to reduce their numbers, but we realize that since last year, this “ten years” is now. Some dioceses need to start asking parishes to indicate which buildings should be put up for sale and which can be kept in the next few years,” she explains.
“It will ensure that places of worship closed or transformed increase more rapidly in the coming years,” she adds.
A last resort
Over the past five years, 27 places of worship have been demolished across the province, more than a third of them in the past two years: 7 in 2021 and 4 as of December 23 this year. Places demolished in 2022 include Saint-Joachim Church in Saguenay, Sainte-Marguerite-de-Cortone Church in Trois-Rivières, Saint-Simon Church in Trécesson and Saint-Eugène Chapel in Blue Sea, Outaouais .
However, demolitions are increasingly exceptional, notes Isabelle Lortie. “It’s more and more a last resort, because there are more and more people who are interested in heritage and who are sensitive to conservation, whether for the heritage value of the building or for the sustainable development. They see the building as an opportunity for development, rather than tearing it down and building something new,” she notes.
The places of worship demolished this year, for example, had long been vacant. “The owners had long since abandoned them. The state of the structure had become dangerous, or else they were very expensive to transform,” explains the adviser.
In the majority of cases, places of worship which have lost their followers or which no longer have the means to continue their religious activities are instead transformed for new vocations. For example: the Collégial international Sainte-Anne, in Lachine, which transformed the chapel of the former convent into a technological library, the Christ Roi church — the first church sold in Saint-Hyacinthe — which became the Salle Théâtre La Scène, or again the Saint-Raymond-de-Pennafort church transformed into a climbing center in Gatineau.
Of the 119 places of worship demolished since the inventory was taken, 29 were located in Montérégie (24%). There were 16 in the Capitale-Nationale region and 12 in Montreal. Estrie is the region with the most building closures, with 25 places of worship closed. The region alone therefore brings together 16% of the 159 religious establishments in the province that have closed their doors in the last 20 years.