After almost 70 years in downtown Langford, Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church will celebrate its final mass this month before the church is demolished to make way for a new West Shore post-secondary campus.
Bishop of Victoria Gary Gordon is expected at a “liturgy of closure” on Sept. 17 to decommission the Goldstream Avenue site, the scene of hundreds of baptisms, weddings and funerals since 1955.
Sacred objects such as the altar, statuary, tabernacle, lectern, confessionals and stained-glass windows will be removed and put in storage before excavators move in to take the structure down.
The growing parish, which serves about 350 families, will be without a permanent home for months, said Father Dean Henderson, as construction on its new seven-acre site on Irwin Road continues to experience delays.
While work is underway on the new church, Our Lady of the Rosary will hold services at a church on Department of National Defence property in Colwood.
“It’s sort of a running joke that we hope we won’t be wandering in the wilderness for the next 40 years, like Moses and the Israelites,” said Henderson.
The new church is expected to have a capacity of 500 — almost triple the size of the current church — as well as a 450-seat community hall, gathering rooms and a daycare with 32 spaces. Initial infrastructure will also be installed for a kindergarten-to-Grade 4 Catholic school in the future.
Although some site preparation has been completed and a construction management firm is in place, construction has not yet begun on the Irwin Road property.
“It’s been a year in the making, but it’s not been without bumps in the road,” said Henderson. “But we’re confident it will be a win-win and all will benefit when we open.”
Henderson said the delays are the result of design changes to the original plans, increasing costs and some issues at the municipal level because the project is close to a Capital Regional District main water line.
It’s also been affected by lingering impacts of the pandemic, such as supply-chain challenges and worker shortages, said Henderson.
Sod was turned and the ground blessed during ceremonies last October that involved Gordon, government officials and First Nations. A meeting room in the new church will be dedicated to First Nations.
Henderson said plans for the new church have been in the works for years.
The Irwin Road property, a former turkey farm and processing plant, was acquired about 30 years ago by parishioners after a fundraising effort, but a new church was never built on the site, which was considered too far out, Henderson said.
The Catholic Diocese later bought the property from parishioners, but sold it back to the church after it sold the Goldstream location to Royal Roads University last year.
Royal Roads is partnering with Camosun College, the University of Victoria and the Justice Institute of B.C. to build a campus on the Goldstream property. That project has been underway for several months and includes a $77.8-million investment from the provincial government for construction of the building, and $18.5 million from Royal Roads University for the land purchase.
The project will include $1 million from the University of Victoria and $200,000 from Camosun College.
Henderson said Our Lady of the Rosary parish has outgrown its current church, which seats about 200.
Although about 30% of parishioners never returned after the pandemic, Henderson said the loss has been more than offset by a growing number of new immigrants, including Catholics from Mexico and Central and South America as well as the Philippines, Nigeria and India.
“We have lots of families, youth, children in a very culturally diverse parish now,” said Henderson.
He said it’s bittersweet to leave the old church site because of its history, but it feels good that the land has been designated as a place for learning. “We have to be thankful for Royal Roads for creating a great new legacy on that site,” said Henderson.
Many of the sacred objects taken from the old church will be put into storage and incorporated into the new one, including the stained glass windows on either side of the tabernacle, he said.
The church property on Goldstream was initially called St. Richard’s. Completed in 1928, the old church could accommodate about 55 people. It was one of four “mission churches” that were built as an extension of the Victoria Diocese, along with St. Francis Xavier in Otter Point (1923), St. Rose of Lima in Sooke (1926) and St. Margaret’s in Strawberry Vale (1927).
As the Langford area started to grow in the 1940s and 1950s, Father Willard O’Brien, who was appointed parish priest in 1951, petitioned the bishop to build a new church or extend the existing one. A new church was approved for $20,000 and the majority of work was done by volunteer labour.
The St. Richard’s church was moved to one side and O’Brien and most of the parishioners worked for nine months to complete the new church, which was finished and blessed before Christmas in 1955.
O’Brien commissioned carver Rudy Soyfort to create a statue of the Virgin Mary from an eight-foot-diameter piece of yellow cedar for $50. It was in place in 1956.
O’Brien remained the parish priest until his retirement in 1982, and died in 1993, age 82. He is buried at Hatley Memorial Gardens in Colwood, where his gravestone calls the priest a co-founder of the 53-acre cemetery.
• Masses for Our Lady of the Rosary parishioners will be held in the Our Lady Star of the Sea chapel at CFB Esquimalt on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
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