Eighteenth- and 19th-century immigrants from the Scottish Highlands, Irish builder Sylvester O'Donoghue, Quebec-born architect Adolphe Levesque and painter Ozias Leduc, as well as Catholics of many different nationalities and ethnicities, form the multitude who have indelibly contributed to the 150-year history of St. Ninian Cathedral Parish.

It's a century-and-a-half to be marked with a commemorative Mass and reception Sept. 15, the grand finale for a year of celebrations in homage to the ornate house of worship, which was originally dedicated on Sept. 13, 1874. Within 12 years of its inception, this 170-foot long and 70-foot wide limestone and sandstone cathedral became the episcopal seat for the Diocese of Antigonish, N.S. — a status it has retained to this day.

Rector Fr. Daniel MacLennan and a dedicated team of volunteers assembled in September 2023 and quickly concluded that buzz and momentum could be generated in the lead-up to the sesquicentennial with a diverse slate of fundraisers and events. MacLennan said this approach has paid off handsomely.

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“It has pulled the parish together, especially coming out of the strangeness of COVID,” said MacLennan. “We were able to use our parish facilities for celebrations connecting not only with our parishioners but actually with the town of Antigonish. People have seen how well our committee has done with planning the liturgies and celebrations — a song and prayer card were written for the 150th anniversary — that there has been an increase in attendance.”

Helen Kennedy, chair of the anniversary committee, said she and her fellow volunteers sought to convey two key messages through the planned activities. The first was underscoring the contemporary parish body's “knowledge of and respect for” St. Ninian history and the “people who built and sustained this church.” The other central overarching theme is that the present-day St. Ninian is “a welcome community to all.”

“We're opening the doors and we're seeing our community change,” said Kennedy. “We want people to feel welcome and at home celebrating their faith with us.”

Following preliminary planning, the committee staged an opening Mass and pancake breakfast as a “soft launch” prelude for future merriment. Early fundraising initiatives yielded fruitful results, which enabled forthcoming anniversary events to showcase more creative aplomb.

In March, the committee coordinated a cabaret-style dinner theatre night called “Drinking with the Saints.” Various actors depicted saints with ties to Antigonish, such as St. Andrew, St. Martha and St. Francis Xavier, in a production revealing how St. Ninian — whose feast day is Sept. 16 — emerged as the cathedral’s namesake. In April, 15 different nationalities were represented in the cathedral’s “Soups of the World” event.

July saw the cathedral partner with the Antigonish Highland Society to host the 150th anniversary dinner during the Antigonish Highland Games. During the parade honouring the town’s Scottish diaspora, young churchgoers marched down the streets with large replica pieces of the cathedral while the bells of St. Ninian rang.

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Complementing the fundraisers and fellowship events were nods to the 150th anniversary woven into liturgical services. On Pentecost Sunday there was an organized procession of parishioners from different cultures dressed in their native attire and carrying treasured artifacts.

Akin to MacLennan, Toosje Van de Sande, an anniversary committee member who has served in the Catholic Women’s League for over 60 years, said the most gratifying impact of all the events is witnessing people return to the St. Ninian flock.

“People are getting re-engaged in what is happening in the parish,” said Van de Sande. “They are volunteering to do things. We have (more) volunteers who are regular churchgoers and people who are not regular churchgoers. Maybe this is an avenue for them to come back to worship at the cathedral.” 

Perhaps one of the best signifiers of a bright future for St. Ninian Cathedral is that students attending St. Francis Xavier University are gracing the pews each weekend to worship the Lord and receive the Eucharist. These young churchgoers and the newcomers to Antigonish are being invited to join the parishioners with familial connections to St. Ninians’ past to co-write the cathedral’s future.

Interestingly, even before the 365-day salute to St. Ninian, the history of this Roman Basilica was garnering significant media attention in recent years because of the efforts to restore 14 of the murals rendered by Ozias Leduc, who was hailed during his time as the “Michelangelo of Canada.”

The Saint-Hilaire-de-Rouville, Que., native beautified the walls and columns in 1902 with representations of the apostles, St. John the Baptist, St. Cecilia and two angels of God holding tablets. Much of his work was covered when parish renovators decided in 1937 that St. Ninian needed a fresh coat of paint.

An ongoing fundraising campaign that netted more than $500,000 over 10 years made it possible to commission conservator Michelle Gallinger and her team. They were conducting this painstaking effort against a clock. With each passing year, peelings were causing more and more of Leduc’s original work to be lost. There was essentially no room for error as they reglued, humidified, tacked irons, reframed and painted.

In 2022, Gallinger told The Register about the near-miraculous work required to return St. John’s mural to glowing life.

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“Actually 80 per cent of him was in critical condition,” said Gallinger. “If you would have touched it, he would have flipped off the wall and fallen to the ground. He took 13 weeks to complete. We had a major loss of John due to all the painting, and most of John was gone due to past painters aggressively scraping the walls. It was devastating. We had to paint in most of his left column because it was completely scraped away.”

MacLennan said there is an aspiration to one day restore Leduc’s Stations of the Cross and his work adorning the nave ceiling and sanctuary vault.