St. Mary's Church, formally the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

parish church in

Red Deer, Alberta Red Deer is a city in Alberta, Canada, located midway on the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor. Red Deer serves central Alberta, and its key industries include health care, retail trade, construction, oil and gas, hospitality, manufacturing and educati ...

. The church is part of the

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton The Archdiocese of Edmonton () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese in the Canadian civil province of Alberta and the seat of its archbishop is at St. Joseph Cathedral (Edmonton), St. Joseph Cathedral, a minor basilica in Edm ...

and opened in 1968. It is most notable as the first building designed by

Douglas Cardinal Douglas Joseph Cardinal (born 7 March 1934) is a Canadian architect based in Ottawa, Ontario. His architecture is influenced by his Indigenous heritage, as well as European Expressionist architecture.

History

St. Mary's was the second Catholic parish in Red Deer and was formed as an outgrowth of the Sacred Heart parish. The new parish was formed in October 1963 as St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, and received its current name in September 1964. The parish hired architect Douglas Cardinal to design its church. Cardinal, who had grown up near Red Deer, had at the time just opened an independent practice. Cardinal designed an expressionist structure made of brick that was intended to respond to the modernisations of the

Second Vatican Council The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , was the 21st and most recent ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City for session ...

.Trevor Boddy, ''The Architecture of Douglas Cardinal'', (NeWest Press, 1989), 32. Construction began in 1966 and the church opened officially in 1968.

References

Buildings and structures completed in 1968 Catholic churches in Canada Douglas Cardinal buildings Red Deer, Alberta {{Canada-RC-church-stub