A historic Nova Scotia church that's been using wooden boards to ensure its roof stays up for the last year is moving into the final phase of a $1-million restoration project.
Truro's First United Church has stood on Prince Street in the town centre for more than a century. Seven years ago, the congregation discovered they needed to do extensive repairs — or face losing the church.
Most of that work was done by 2017, when they learned the floor-to-ceiling windows were structurally unsound. Engineers said a big windstorm could blow them into the church.
For the last year, wooden boards have covered parts of the two-storey windows to ensure that doesn't happen.
"Because we are a historic site, the windows have to be made to essentially be replicas of the ones that are being taken out," said Rev. Valerie Kingsbury.
The replica windows arrived Monday and crews started the delicate installation.
"It'll take probably the next 12 or 14 weeks because it's about a week per window to install them."
Kingsbury said the congregation paid for much of the overall $1-million repair job, and financial assistance last year from the National Trust helped pay for the windows. She said the congregation pressed on with the salvation effort as a tribute to those who built the church during the dark days of the First World War.
"The current structure was built in 1916 — that's when the cornerstone was laid. At the beginning of the war, the old structure burned to the ground and so the community decided to rebuild and did that," she said.
It became a landmark in Truro and its steeple is visible from most of the town. Kingsbury said when the new windows are all in, the church should be sound for another century or so.
"I think it's a sense of pride and accomplishment and a sense of feeling that we have certainly been able to hold up the story of our ancestors and preserve that for those that come after us," she said. "It's a time of great excitement."