Jesuit Church And Seminary In New France

The religious architecture of New France provides the first examples of the use of slate roofing in Canada. The initial churches, stripped down imitations of the monumental classic architecture of 17th-century France, used foreign building materials. 

The 1666 Jesuit church built on the Place du Marche at Quebec, and designed in the form of a latin cross with a bell tower at the transept crossing, had a French-slated hipped roof. A second example was Notre-Dame-de lmmaculet-Conception established as the parish church of Quebec in 1664. Seminaries and roofing company Toronto also used French slate. At Quebec, the Jesuit College was slate covered and the second Ursuline Convent was partly roofed with slates. 

Accounts indicate that the nuns bought 38 000 slates in 1674 and paid Maltre Robert Pepin “piqucur d’ardoise” for installing both slates and shingles. In 1687, 36 000 slates, with 300 feet of lead and 60 000 nails were sent to Montreal from the port of La Rochelle in France to cover the Sulpician seminary then being built.

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