‘Up in smoke’: New Brunswick village reeling after fire guts 114-year-old church

A charred shell is all that remains of a once majestic church on the Acadian Coast of northern New Brunswick.

Fire tore through St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church in Bas-Caraquet, N.B.,this weekend.

The call came in Sunday afternoon, and although fire crews thought they had the situation under control, they received another call at 4:00 a.m. on Monday.

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“They called every fireman around here and that’s the result. We just lost out church,” said Roger Chiasson, Mayor of Bas-Caraquet, a town located roughly three hours north of Moncton.

The church is located along the main street of the village, and the smell of smoke was still thick this afternoon.

Alfone Albert lives in the area and has a familial connection to the hallowed ground, with his parents having been married inside.

He says the loss of the building will hit the older generation of parishioners the hardest.

“The younger generation [is] not that bad, but the old ones say, ‘at my age, that makes it something,'” Albert said.

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The church recently underwent a campaign to keep the church, receiving $50,000 from the village for exterior work.

Chiasson admits that the church is the heart of the village.

“If you talk about a school, a church, everything like that, it’s a big part [of the community] so it’s a lot of memories that go up in smoke,” he said.

There’s still no word on the official cause of the fire.