by Robert Smythe
The first St. Jean Baptiste Church was constructed in 1872 on Queen Street West in LeBreton Flats. Originally, its parish extended westward to Britannia Bay and ultimately encompassed close to 5,000 souls.
As the size of the Francophone community grew, a bigger building was required and the cornerstone for a new edifice atop Nanny Goat Hill was laid on May 5, 1883.
Plans for the initial section of the St. Jean complex were devised by Fr. Joseph Michaud, chief designer for the Dominican Order. In 1898, the scheme for an attached bell tower shown in the above drawing (never built) and monastery wings was approved and partially built during 1899 and 1909. Over time, St. Jean Baptiste would come to dominate this section of the Dalhousie neighbourhood with two schools (Ecole St. Jean Baptiste and St. Dominic’s School), the large St. Jean Parish Hall (built in 1922, now the Chinese Community Christian Church), and the Caisse Populaire Saint-Jean at 725 Somerset Street W.
While the exterior of St. Jean’s 1883 building was relatively plain, its interior was exceptional — the work of priest-architect Fr. Georges Bouillon, who is best known for his interior decoration of the Rideau Street Convent Chapel, disassembled in 1972 and now re-installed at the National Gallery of Canada. He was also responsible for the florid elements of the galleries, nave and altar at Notre Dame Basilica on Sussex Drive and an exotic Moorish-inspired chapel for the University of Ottawa (destroyed by fire).
For St. Jean’s interior, Fr. Bouillon deployed a series of domes supported by slender columns which was dramatized by electric uplighting, installed around 1930.
On a frigid Sunday morning, February 8, 1931, fire swept though St. Jean Baptiste and the adjoining Dominican monastery.
The church was reduced to a charred stone shell.
Remarkably, the new St. Jean Baptiste Church was opened for public worship on February 21, 1932, only one year after the destruction of its predecessor.
Built at a cost of $275,000 on “early Norman-English lines,” it was designed by Fr. J.A. Larue, the Dominican Order’s official architect.
St. Jean’s crowning glory, a 47-carillon of silver-bronze bells, ranging between 28 pounds and 3 1/2 tons, would take somewhat longer to complete.
The bells for Canada’s second largest carillon were cast by the Michiels Foundry of Tournai, Belgium, arriving at the church on October 29, 1939, to be duly blessed while they awaited the later arrival of installation plans and a carillon expert from Europe.
Unfortunately, both plans and expert were sunk en route by a German U-boat in early 1940. The bells themselves had narrowly escaped sinking in the opening days of WWII.
It fell to J.A. Cronier of 27 Lett Street, a retired mechanic and structural steel worker who had helped assemble the Peace Tower carillon, to solve this 2,600 piece puzzle. He managed to bolt everything in place within seven weeks and, on May 25, 1940, Emile Vendette, St. Jean’s carilloneur, performed a ringing duet with the Dominion carilloneur who was playing simultaneously from Parliament Hill.
The great belfry on Empress Avenue has been silent for some time because all of the transmission lines from the keyboard to the clappers were cut many years ago.
