Farewell Dear Notre Dame

By William T. Clew  | The Catholic Free Press

It was saved from the wrecker’s ball once.
An attempt to save it again has failed.
So now Notre Dame des Canadiens Church is coming down.
It has been a landmark facing the Worcester Common since it was dedicated on Sept. 15, 1929. Notre Dame des Canadiens Parish was founded in 1869.
For Norman Caissie the razing of the church building was sad, but inevitable. He said that when the church was closed in 2008 by the diocese, the building was sound. But it needed repairs that could have cost up to $1 million.
“The parish couldn’t afford that,” he said.
He said that when his parents moved from Canada to Worcester they joined Notre Dame des Canadiens Parish. He became an altar boy when he was 8 years old. He and his family lived near Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the Elm Park Elementary School and he walked to Notre Dame to serve Mass.
“Walking was safer then,” he said.
He said he was a parishioner at Notre Dame up to the day it closed. As an adult he became an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist and distributed Communion. He also served at various times as president and vice president of the parish St. Vincent de Paul Society. But he never stopped being an altar server there. He said he served at special Masses and, with fewer youngsters becoming altar servers, sometimes on Sundays.
He said his parents, who had moved to Sturbridge, continued as parishioners at Notre Dame.
Mr. Caissie now lives in the Webster Square area. After Notre Dame Church was closed, he became a parishioner at Our Lady of the Angels Parish.
He has seen a little of the razing of the Notre Dame building - it no longer is a church, he said - on television. But he has not watched the work downtown.
“You have to let it go,” he said.
Our Lady of the Angels is a Catholic church, he said, and the Mass is the same. And, at Our Lady of the Angels, Mr. Caissie is a eucharistic minister, just as he was at Notre Dame. He also is president of the parish St. Vincent de Paul Society.
“They talked me into it,” he said with a laugh.
His parents no longer make the commute to Worcester for Mass. They now are parishioners at St. Anne and St. Patrick Parish in Sturbridge.


By William T. Clew
The Catholic Free Press
Notre Dame des Canadiens Parish was founded in 1869. When its first pastor, Father Jean-Baptiste Primeau, came from Montreal to serve the growing French-Canadian community of Worcester, Bishop John J. Williams of Boston gave him two assignments, according to a book by Richard L. Gagnon titled, “A Parish Grows Around the Common: Notre Dame des Canadiens, 1869-1995.”
He was to be assistant to Father John Power, pastor of St. Ann Parish, and to establish a parish for the French-Canadians of Worcester. According to  author Gagnon, “There were 1,743 Canadians, or about 350 families, in the city.” About a third were not regular communicants, he said.
Father Primeau gathered the Canadians and asked whether they wanted to continue at St. Ann Parish or have a parish of their own. They chose the second option unanimously, Mr. Gagnon wrote.
“On Sept. 26, 1869, 450 Canadians met with their own pastor on the second floor of Horticultural Hall for their first Mass as a Canadian Catholic community,” Mr. Gagnon wrote.
It was not usual in the 1800s to see a Catholic church in the center of a New England city, and on the Common, no less. But in May 1870, Father Primeau, with the approval of the parish, bought a church from the First Methodist Episcopal Society of Worcester.
It was on Park Street – later renamed Franklin Street –  facing the Common. Father Primeau made the purchase on June 1, 1870, for $22,700, according to Mr. Gagnon.
The parish grew and, by 1880,  it was decided to remodel the church. The remodeling  turned into a rebuilding. When it was finished, the church had been expanded by 54 feet to 128 feet long. It was 34 feet wide along the Park Street front, with walls 30 feet high. It had two towers, one 60 feet high, the other topping out at 110 feet. It could  seat 1,032 rather than only 627, the capacity before remodeling, Mr. Gagnon wrote.
In 1908 a fire, which started in a building on Park Street, spread to several buildings, including the church. The church was destroyed.
Fortunately, in 1902, the parish had bought land and a Baptist church on Salem Square and used it primarily as a school. It became the new Notre Dame des Canadiens Church.
In 1927, the second Notre Dame des Canadiens Church construction began. The old building was  razed to make way for a new, cathedral-like building. It was 198 feet long, running from Trumbull Street to Salem Square. It was 91 feet wide and 64 feet high. It had two towers, each topped with a gold cross. A 194-foot high bell tower stood over the sanctuary. The architectural style was Neo-Romanesque, a style popular in France, Mr. Gagnon wrote.
In the mid-1960s the church survived a scare. Redevelopment plans by the Worcester Redevelopment Authority for the center of Worcester called for a large area to be demolished and the new Worcester Center built in its place. It looked like Notre Dame des Canadiens Church would be gone. Its neighbor, Salem Square Covenant Church, was taken and demolished.
But the WRA decided that Notre Dame could stand. A Mass of thanksgiving was celebrated in the church on July 2, 1969. Father Edward G. Cormier, who celebrated the Mass, said it was a sign of ecumenism in Worcester that so many people of different faiths worked to save the church.
But, by 2008, Bishop McManus, citing dropping  attendance, closed five parishes and merged them with others. Notre Dame, which had been merged with St. Joseph to form Notre Dame/St. Joseph Parish, was merged with Holy Name Parish to form Holy Family Parish at St. Joseph Church on Hamilton Street.
In 2010 the Notre Dame des Canadiens Church building was sold to CitySquare II Development Co. LLC., the Hanover Insurance Group, principal investor in CitySquare.
During the ensuing years, CitySquare II tried to find a use for the building. But they could not find a feasible option. A group of citizens formed a Save Notre Dame Alliance and appealed to the city to buy the building. But that attempt failed.