Blaze destroys church on Gambler First Nation
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/08/2016 (3536 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The brass bell from a Catholic church on Gambler First Nation was saved only hours before the unused wooden building burned to the ground on Friday.
At about 1 p.m. on Friday, firefighters from Binscarth, St. Lazare and Russell were all called to reports that St. Hubert’s Catholic church was ablaze.
“We knew it wasn’t a new building by any means,” said Owen Jessop, fire chief of the RM of Ellie-Archie and St. Lazare Fire Department.
They arrived to what he described as a “500-square foot bonfire.”
From the beginning, the firefight was a matter of containment for the 15 firefighters, Jessop said. The firefighters from Russell wound up being turned around after it was determined the building couldn’t be saved.
Jessop said by the end, “there wasn’t a whole lot left other than a big pile of ashes and burning coals.”
But what does remain is the church’s bell, which had been removed from the church earlier that same Friday.
A spokesperson for Gambler Chief David LeDoux, who was unavailable on the weekend, said a small ceremony was held with some of the last elders to have attended the church and representatives from the Manitoba Métis Federation
“(The church) was used both by Métis and First Nations and they had agreed they would dismantle it — it was becoming a possible danger so we took the bell out in the morning,” the spokesperson said.
“We had been working on it for quite some time, because it sat empty for so long nobody knew who was in charge of it so we researched it … we talked to the deacon who comes out here and he agreed that it was a danger,” she said.
The brass bell has a “beautiful sound to it,” she added.
The bell will be incased in a new steeple structure and relocated to the Ste. Madeleine cemetery, about 15 km southeast of Binscarth.
“We have a lot of Métis and First Nation people that are interrelated and buried out there. We’re going to inscribe it with Gambler First Nation and Manitoba Métis Federation,” she said.
Gambler First Nation is home to about 100, and located near the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border about 165 km northwest of Brandon.
Jesse wasn’t aware any investigation into the fire, but said RCMP members responded to the fire on Friday afternoon.
» tbateman@brandonsun.com
» Twitter: @tombatemann