Monday's devastating fire in Paris which left most of the Notre Dame Cathedral in ruins brought back memories of a similar day in Manitoba many years ago. 

In July of 1968 St. Boniface was still its own city. It was a city often referred to as the Cathedral City because of its large and beautiful Roman Catholic Cathedral, the St. Boniface Cathedral. Catholics in the city had been celebrating 150 years of the first Catholic mission west of the Great Lakes when disaster struck.

Similar to Notre Dame, the St. Boniface Cathedral also burned during the process of significant restoration efforts being completed. In the St. Boniface fire a worker had discarded a cigarette butt unknowingly into the woodchip insulation of the church. That cigarette would ignite a large fire that eventually left only the stone shell of the cathedral.

Richard Frechette is the financial administrator for Notre Dame de l’Assomption in Winnipeg. He says Catholics in Winnipeg understand the impact of such a loss.

"It resonates maybe even more for people here in Winnipeg, especially for the French-Catholic community that went through that fire about 50 years ago."

It might not have been world-famous like the Notre Dame Cathedral, but the St. Boniface Cathedral was a landmark in western Canada, Frechette said.

The St. Boniface fire raged for over three hours. People from across the city gathered and watched on in disbelief. Newspaper reports from the time report some people crying, while others simply stood with mouths agape, watching the 60-year-old structure fall in on, and consume, itself.

According to the Winnipeg Time Machine Blog, reporters said they could feel the heat two blocks away. George Siamandas, of the Winnipeg Time Machine Blog, writes that the Fire Chief at the time said there was no way to stop such a fire once it started.

A few items, such as furniture and an organ, were salvaged at first. But soon police declared the site unsafe and would not allow anyone to return inside.

Siamandas says fine wood elements, parish records, and other objects were lost.

While parishioners originally hoped to rebuild the cathedral to its former glory, it proved to be too expensive as estimates were around $10 million (about $72 million in 2019 dollars).

Eventually, architect Etienne Gaboury helped the church choose a design to build a new church within the site of the former cathedral. Construction was finished and it was blessed July 17th, 1972, five days before the fourth anniversary of the fire.

That reconstruction still stands today and has won several design awards.