The bricks were made by hand from clay dug nearby, the timber was cut locally, the stone came out of the fields, and the builders were the parishioners themselves. A hundred and twenty-five years later the sand underneath is giving way.
At a glance
St. Joachim’s stands on the east side of rue Principale in La Broquerie, a Francophone village in south-eastern Manitoba between Steinbach and the Sandilands. It was built in 1898 and dedicated in 1901, by volunteers from the parish under their priest, Father Roch-Alexandre Giroux, out of materials taken from the ground around them. The Rural Municipality of La Broquerie designated it a municipal heritage site on 23 February 2000 — the only one in the municipality — and it was listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places in 2005. The designation covers the church, the grotto beside it, the cemetery behind it and the whole wooded lot. It is now halfway through a three-year restoration, because the ground it stands on is sand and the building is sinking into it.
Key facts
- Where: 107 rue Principale, La Broquerie, Rural Municipality of La Broquerie, Manitoba R0A 0W0
- Built: 1898; the cornerstone was blessed on 1 July 1901 by Monsignor Azarie Dugas, vicar general of Saint-Boniface, and the church solemnly blessed on 3 December 1901 by Archbishop Adélard Langevin, who declared Saint Joachim the parish’s official patron
- Architect: none recorded. The Canadian Register gives no architect and states that the church was built by parish volunteers supervised by their priest, Father Alexandre Giroux — the abbé Roch-Alexandre Giroux, who had come to the parish in 1893.
- Materials: bricks made by hand from nearby clay deposits, wood cut locally, a stone foundation, cedar shingles
- Style: described by the register as French Catholic church architecture derived from French-Canadian examples of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, applied to a rural Manitoba parish church
- Protection: Manitoba Municipal Heritage Site no. 194, designated by the Rural Municipality of La Broquerie on 23 February 2000 under by-law 1-2000; listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places on 23 December 2005. The designation covers the church, the grotto, the cemetery and the site.
- Parish: declared the mission of Saint-Joachim on 15 November 1883 by Archbishop Alexandre Taché; raised to a parish on 18 April 1935
- Restoration: a three-year project with a fundraising goal of C$1.5 million, of which C$700,000 had been raised by February 2026
- Coordinates: 49.525076, -96.509754 · open in Google Maps
History
La Broquerie was one of the Francophone settlements that Archbishop Taché of Saint-Boniface worked to plant in south-eastern Manitoba in the 1870s and 1880s. The place was declared the mission of Saint-Joachim on 15 November 1883, and the first resident priest arrived the following year and built a first chapel with the help of the settlers already on the ground. In 1893 a young priest named Roch-Alexandre Giroux arrived, and the parish’s own history records that he marked it by his strong character and by being everywhere at once.
The most important thing to happen in his time was the new church, built between 1898 and 1901. The cornerstone was blessed on 1 July 1901 by Monsignor Azarie Dugas, vicar general of Saint-Boniface; on 3 December of the same year Archbishop Adélard Langevin blessed the finished building and declared Saint Joachim the parish’s patron. The 125th anniversary was marked in 2026 on 26 July, the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, rather than on the December date.
What makes the building matter to the heritage branch is not an architect — there wasn’t one — but where it came from. The Manitoba Historic Resources Branch records that the bricks were all made by hand from clay deposits nearby and that the wood was cut locally; the Canadian Register says the church was constructed entirely with local materials by parish volunteers supervised by Father Giroux, and calls it a symbol of local dedication. The municipality designated it in February 2000 as its only municipal heritage site, and the listing extends to the grotto, the cemetery at the rear and the whole treed lot. Some restoration was done under the Manitoba Prairie Icons Project, the successor to the Manitoba Prairie Churches Project.
The problem now is underneath. The church stands on sand, and the original stone-and-clay pillars are shifting as the ground moves, with the east end — an addition to the original building — giving way worst. A parish restoration committee has set out a three-year programme with a goal of C$1.5 million, funded largely from the community: a monthly draw, a raffle, an online appeal, grants from Franco-Manitoban foundations, and donated materials and labour from local businesses. The first phase, an accessible entrance with concrete steps, two ramps, new doors and attic insulation, was finished in 2025 and celebrated in the church on 28 January 2026 with the archbishop of Saint-Boniface, Albert LeGatt, present. The second phase, in 2026, adds storm windows outside the old coloured glass, replaces sixty-year-old lighting, and takes the wood chips out of the walls and puts insulation in. Floor work and masonry repair to the hand-made bricks are still to come. By February 2026, C$700,000 had been raised — helped, as the committee’s vice-president told the CBC, by neighbours in Steinbach including a window manufacturer and a Mennonite historical foundation.
What you see
We have not found a photograph of this church that we are free to publish, so the description that follows comes from the Canadian Register’s own list of the building’s character-defining elements rather than from an image we have looked at.
The church is a high single-storey rectangle under a steeply pitched gable roof, with an apse under a polygonal roof at one end and a sacristy under its own steep gable, all in smooth brick on a stone foundation, with cedar shingles. It sits on an east–west axis with its front facing west, towards the street, near the front of a large treed lot with the cemetery at the back. The front and side elevations are symmetrical. A square bell tower rises over the apex of the front roof, carrying a tin-sheathed spire with classical detailing and a Latin cross; the corner pilasters of the front are capped with miniature tin-sheathed belfries and their own crosses.
The doors are round-arched with elaborate fanlights, the main double door at the foot of the tower. Above it, the tower carries a large arched window with geometrical tracery and a Palladian opening with a central niche holding a sculpture of Saint Joachim; tall round-arched fixed windows run at regular intervals between brick pilasters along the sides. The brickwork is the best of it: thin pointing picked out in a charcoal-coloured line, heavily articulated corbelled and arcaded courses on the front and sides, and brick voussoirs over every door and window.
Inside, the front vestibule and the high nave with its barrel-vaulted ceiling are unaltered. The plan is symmetrical, with a wide centre aisle, lower side aisles marked off by columns, and a raised sanctuary with alcoves at the sides. A substantial U-shaped choir loft runs along the sides of the nave on clustered wooden columns that arch outward at the top, with classical detailing and a richly moulded cornice under the ceiling. There are wooden pews, panelled and plastered walls, coloured glass, and hand-painted religious scenes in the ceiling of the apse. Across the ceiling at the front of the nave is painted Le Dieu Vivant Est Au Milieu De Nous, and over the balcony, Louons-Le-Seigneur.
Practical information
- This is a working parish church, and the parish invites visitors to come and see the building and to stay for Sunday liturgy.
- Work is under way in phases; parts of the interior may be inaccessible.
- The grotto and the cemetery behind the church are part of the designated site.
- Services are in French.
Getting there
La Broquerie is in south-eastern Manitoba, a short drive east of Steinbach on Provincial Road 302 and about an hour from Winnipeg. The church is on rue Principale in the middle of the village; its steeple is the first thing visible on the approach from either direction.
Nearby
- The grotto and the parish cemetery, both inside the designation, on the same lot.
- La Broquerie’s historical trail, a signed walk through the older part of the village.
- The Mennonite Heritage Village at Steinbach, an open-air museum founded in 1967, about a quarter of an hour west.
- The historic church of l’Enfant-Jésus at Ste. Anne, another designated Franco-Manitoban parish building, to the north.
Sources
- Canadian Register of Historic Places — St. Joachim Roman Catholic Church, La Broquerie: the address, the construction in 1898, the absence of a named architect, the construction by parish volunteers under Father Alexandre Giroux with local materials, the municipal designation by R.M. of La Broquerie by-law 1-2000 of 23 February 2000, the extension of the designation to the grotto, the cemetery and the site, and the full list of exterior and interior character-defining elements quoted in the description above.
- Manitoba Historic Resources Branch — Municipal Heritage Site no. 194: the designating authority, the present owner (Paroisse St-Joachim), the dates 1898 and 1901, and the bricks made by hand from nearby clay with locally cut wood.
- Manitoba Historical Society — St. Joachim Roman Catholic Church and Cemetery: the municipal designation of 2000 and the restoration carried out under the Manitoba Prairie Icons Project.
- Paroisse Saint-Joachim — À propos: the mission declared on 15 November 1883 by Archbishop Taché, the erection as a parish on 18 April 1935, the first priest and the first chapel, the arrival of Roch-Alexandre Giroux in 1893, the church built between 1898 and 1901, the cornerstone blessed on 1 July 1901 by Monsignor Azarie Dugas and the solemn blessing on 3 December 1901 by Archbishop Adélard Langevin.
- CBC News, 8 February 2026 — “Sinking La Broquerie church gets lift from southeast Manitoba community”: the sandy ground and the original stone and clay pillars, the three-year project, the first phase celebrated on 28 January 2026, the C$1.5 million goal and the C$700,000 raised, the second-phase windows, lighting and insulation, the floor and masonry work still outstanding, and the help from Steinbach neighbours.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim — position, returned as Paroisse Saint-Joachim, La Broquerie, Rural Municipality of La Broquerie, Manitoba, R0A 0W0.
- No freely licensed photograph of this church exists that we could find: Wikimedia Commons, Openverse and Flickr’s Creative Commons search all return nothing, and the photographs on the Manitoba Historical Society’s page are offered for non-commercial use only. We have published the page without a picture rather than with one we have no right to use.
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