The Church of the Immaculate Conception is a church located in

Cooks Creek, Manitoba Cooks Creek is an unincorporated community in the Rural Municipality of Springfield, Manitoba, Canada. The community is home to two churches, a community centre and a museum. The Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is an intrica ...

. The church was constructed from 1930 to 1938 by the

Ukrainian Canadian Ukrainian Canadians ( uk, Українські канадці, Україноканадці, translit=Ukrayins'ki kanadtsi, Ukrayinokanadtsi; french: Canadiens d'origine ukrainienne) are Canadians, Canadian citizens of Ukrainians, Ukrainian desce ...

priest and architect

Philip Ruh Philip Ruh, O.M.I. (born Philip Roux; ; 6 August 1883 – 24 October 1962) was Catholic priest and church architect. Although he was educated as a Belgian Oblate (Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate), he is remembered for his work in Canada ...

. It was designated a Manitoba Provincial Heritage Site in 1986 and a National Historic Site in 1997.

History

The Cook's Creek Parish of the

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , native_name_lang = uk , caption_background = , image = StGeorgeCathedral Lviv.JPG , imagewidth = , type = Particular church (sui iuris) , alt = , caption = St. George's C ...

was established in 1929.

, a

Catholic priest and architect, was appointed the parish priest and tasked with designing a church that would replace two smaller churches in the area. Construction of the church began in 1930 and was finished in 1938, whereupon work on the church's interiors began. The church was consecrated in 1952. A grotto modeled after that of

Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes () is a Catholic Marian shrine and pilgrimage site dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes in the town of Lourdes, Hautes-Pyrénées, France. The sanctuary includes several religious buildings and monuments aroun ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

was constructed next to the church in 1954.

Preservation

The Church of the Immaculate Conception was named a on 1 May 1986 and then subsequently a National Historic Site on 22 September 1997. It was added to the

Canadian Register of Historic Places The Canadian Register of Historic Places (CRHP; french: Le Répertoire canadien des lieux patrimoniaux), also known as Canada's Historic Places, is an online directory of historic sites in Canada which have been formally recognized for their her ...

on 14 July 2009.

Architecture

The Church of the Immaculate Conception was designed by Ruh in an

eclectic style Eclecticism is a kind of mixed style in the fine arts: "the borrowing of a variety of styles from different sources and combining them" . Significantly, Eclecticism hardly ever constituted a specific style in art: it is characterized by the fact th ...

combining elements from

Kievan Rus' Kievan Rusʹ, also known as Kyivan Rusʹ ( orv, , Rusĭ, or , , ; Old Norse: ''Garðaríki''), was a state in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Historical Atlas of ...

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

, and

Gothic architecture Gothic architecture (or pointed architecture) is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It e ...

. Architectural historians Basil Rotoff, Roman Yereniuk, and Stella Hryniuk note that the profile of the church overall resembles Kievan Rus' churches found in eastern Ukraine but is punctuated with Romanesque windows and a Gothic

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

. The church was built from brick to a

cruciform Cruciform is a term for physical manifestations resembling a common cross or Christian cross. The label can be extended to architectural shapes, biology, art, and design. Cruciform architectural plan Christian churches are commonly described ...

plan, measuring . It has nine domes and

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, from ...

s above the cross's arms, flanking the arms, and above the center of the church.

References

Sources

* * {{Authority control Churches in Manitoba Ukrainian Catholic churches in Canada Churches completed in 1938 20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings 20th-century churches in Canada Buildings and structures in Eastman Region, Manitoba