Manitoba Municipal Heritage Site No. 27

Monseigneur Tache Historic Site
98, rue Saltel
Ste-Geneviève

Monseigneur Tache Historic Site
Designation Date: September 12, 1989
Designation Authority: Taché (R.M.)
Present Owner: privately owned

The Monseigneur Tache Historic Site is a good example of the kind of ecclesiastical compound that defined many French-Canadian villages in southeastern Manitoba, the heartland of French culture in rural Manitoba. Each element of the site – church, rectory and cemetery – is a fine representative of those traditional aspects of the culture. The church, whose towering spire is visible from a distance, is a modest example of ecclesiastical design traditions developed in Quebec in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and later recreated in French-Canadian villages of the Prairies. The rectory, a simple and modest building, is a fitting complement to the grander church building, and the cemetery, with its many elegant gravemarkers, is an important connection to the area’s pioneers. The site continues to serve as a testament to the closely-knit nature of the community, especially when it resolved to restore the church after a fire in 1994. The church also continues its important local role as an integral part of the hamlet’s streetscape and as the village’s distinguishing feature