The first time I visited Europe, I suffered from church fatigue. It happens to the best of tourists, visiting one soaring cathedral after another. In Southeast Asia, they call it temple fatigue, and they also use the phrase “Same Same but Different” to describe the repetition of menus, or souvenirs, or temples. I mention this because it is exceedingly rare to encounter a church that doesn’t look like any other church on earth. Such is the case with Our Lady of Victory in Inuvik, more popularly known as the Igloo Church.
No, it is not made of ice.
In 1958, Inuvik was emerging atop the permafrost as the new capital of the western Arctic. The government had decided to base itself here due to its position on a stretch of flat land and sheltered from the wind. Nearby Aklavik, which actually had a local population, was considered too vulnerable to flooding in the Mackenzie Delta. The Catholic Church sent a priest from Quebec named Brother Maurice Larocque, who was inspired to build a church that reflected the arctic environment, a building that would be simple yet meaningful. A skilled carpenter, he designed the Igloo Church without a blueprint, just a guide of a few lines on a piece of plywood. Timber was boated almost 2,000 kilometres down the Mackenzie River from Fort Smith, along with gravel to create an insulation bed.
Nunavut Has One, Too
In Iqaluit, it was Queen Elizabeth II who broke ground with a silver spade on a similar igloo-shaped Anglican church in 1972. Built by Inuit carpenters, St. Jude’s Cathedral featured a rotund base beneath a spire and cross. In 2005, the church was destroyed by arson, although many of the interior artifacts were fortunately salvaged from the fire. After years of fundraising, the igloo church was rebuilt and opened in 2012 at a cost of eight million dollars. The Anglican Diocese of the Arctic is the largest in the world, covering an area of four million square kilometres.
It took two years to build the striking exterior, complemented with stained-glass windows, embossing, and interior religious artwork by a young artist named Mona Thrasher. Sharing a namesake with the iconic Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, Our Lady of Victory officially opened in 1960, and today it’s the most photographed attraction in town. Each Christmas, the church holds a popular concert in English, Gwich’in, and Inuvialuktun, as well as a performance from a local Filipino choir, reflecting the shifting demographics of the region. Tagalog carols in an Arctic igloo church? Now that’s different.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/igloochurch