St. Eugene's Mission Church - Cranbrook, BC - This Old Church on Waymarking.com

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St. Eugene's Mission Church - Cranbrook, BC

in This Old Church

Posted by:  T0SHEA

11U E 590129 N 5493198

The St. Eugene Mission was built in 1897 with money gotten from the serendipitous find of a silver mine.

It was actually a man named Pierre, a Ktunaxa First Nations member, who brought a sample of galena to Father Coccola, who immediately recognized its potential value. The Father had previously asked the members to bring him any interesting rocks or minerals they should chance upon, in the hope that this very thing may eventually come to pass. The galena turned out to be a tiny part of a large ore body which the Father staked and immediately sold for $12,000. This was to be the source of funding for the St. Eugene Mission and the St. Eugene Church.

A British Columbia Historic Site, the church presently stands empty, awaiting restoration. The intention, I believe, is to reopen it as a historic site.

The Oblate Order founded the first mission near the site of the current mission in 1873. The first building served initially as a school, residence and later as a hospital. Financing the new mission buildings was in part provided by the discovery in 1893 of a rich ore body by Pierre, a Ktunaxa First Nations member. He brought a sample of rich galena ore to Father Coccola, head of the St. Eugene Mission and the two staked claims above the town of Moyie. Father Coccola sold the claim for $12,000 and constructed the St. Eugene Church (prefabricated in Italy) in 1897, which graces the Mission area today. Within 10 years the St. Eugene Mine produced more than $10 million and gave the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (later Cominco) its start.

With the infusion of capital the Mission became a large self-supporting complex, milling its own grain in the first flour mill in the region. In 1910 the Canadian government funded and constructed the Mission school, presently the main part of the hotel complex. Operated at the time by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the facility was the first comprehensive Indian “Industrial and Residential” school to be built in the Canadian West. The Mission instructed 5000 children from the Okanagan, Shuswap and Blackfoot Nations in addition to the area’s Ktunaxa Nation.

The school was closed in 1970 when government policy changed to encourage public education for Indian children. In 1973 the BC Government leased the Mission with the intent of turning it into a facility for psychiatric care. The building was stripped of historic fixtures and artifacts and after spending $750,000 on renovations, the project was abandoned. The following winter the pipes burst and the building suffered severe damage from internal flooding. For the next twenty years the building remained empty.
From the St. Eugene Resort