Organizations

On July 16, 1818, Roman Catholic missionaries Norbert Provencher and Sévère Dumoulin, and seminarian Guillaume Edge arrived in the Red River Settlement. Acting under the jurisdiction of Bishop Plessis of Quebec, the missionaries were to evangelize the Aboriginal population as well as minister to the needs of the Métis and French Canadian population. This meant building a church, establishing a school and managing a 10,000-acre land grant from Lord Selkirk to support the mission. In 1820, Provencher was named bishop of Juliopolis, auxiliary bishop to Plessis. In 1844, the mission of Red River was detached from the Diocese of Quebec and established as the vicariate apostolic of Hudson Bay and James Bay with Provencher as its first bishop. The territory of the new vicariate was immense, stretching from the Rockies to the Height of Land just west of Lake Superior and from the 49th parallel to the Arctic Ocean. In 1947 the vicariate apostolic became the Diocese of the North-West and in 1851, the Diocese of St. Boniface. Over time, the extent of the St. Boniface Diocese was reduced as other vicariates and dioceses were formed in the West: the Vicariats of the MacKenzie River in 1862 and of Columbia in 1863, and the Diocese of St. Albert in 1871. Nonetheless, St. Boniface remained the Episcopal See of the primate of the extensive ecclesiastic province under whose jurisdiction these other authorities fell. This situation changed with the creation of the new independent dioceses of Vancouver in 1908, Edmonton in 1912, Winnipeg and Regina in 1915. En 1912, Mgr Nicétas Budka was given personal jurisdiction over all the faithful among the Ruthenians in Canada, including Catholics which had previously been the responsibility of the St. Boniface Archdiocese.