Another historic church is gone. Not “damaged.” Not “under repair.” Gone.
Early Monday morning on the Acadian Peninsula of New Brunswick, Saint-Simon Church — believed to be the largest wooden church left in the province, a 1910s landmark by Acadian architect Nazaire Dugas — burned to the ground.
By daylight only a sliver of the base and a brick chimney remained. The New Brunswick Office of the Fire Marshal ruled it intentional.
Saint-Simon is a small fishing community of a few hundred people, amalgamated into Caraquet in 2023. The church was the last major building that still belonged to the village in any meaningful sense.
Mayor Bernard Theriault said every person living there had been baptized or received first communion in it, many were married there, and their parents were buried from it. “Saint-Simon is that small 700-people community that has lost over the years a school, a credit union, a Co-op store, and has always repeated to us that the only pride they had now was this wonderful church.”
Caraquet fire Chief Luc Dugas said a motion-detection device registered movement inside the building around 3:20 a.m. The alarm tripped. The fire call came in minutes later.
Crews from Caraquet, Bertrand and Shippagan arrived to find flames already in the sacristy and racing into the roof. “We tried to contain it but as soon as it gets inside the roofing, forget it, you can’t extinguish it.” He added: “There’s too much wood and varnish, you know what I mean? It’s an old place … and it goes down pretty fast.”
Dugas said early on: “At this time, we believe someone would have set the fire.” The fire marshal later confirmed it. Four nearby buildings were damaged by the heat. No one was inside. No one was injured. The church that had hosted Festival Acadien recitals the week before was a total loss in under two hours.
Resident Isabelle Leger said: “We lost a big part of our heritage, the heart of our community … But like the flags, we will get up stronger.” Another resident, Monique Albert Léger, described watching the steeple go: “The flames had reached the steeple and there was nothing left to do.” Theriault called the scene “a shock” and said, “you should have seen the sadness of the population that was lying around the church at that time.”
Saint-Simon is not Canada’s first church to go this way. After 2021, arsons against churches more than doubled.
A Macdonald-Laurier Institute review found fewer than 4 percent of cases produced charges.
From May 2021 to December 2023, at least 33 Canadian churches burned to the ground; 24 were confirmed arsons, two accidental, the rest unspecified. Over 96 percent unsolved.
In April, the 1893 church in Saint-Romain, Quebec, was destroyed and treated as arson.
The same pattern has unfolded in Britain.
In February, Kings Hall Methodist Church in Southall, West London — a building more than a century old — was gutted overnight. More than ten fire engines and around seventy firefighters fought it for hours. The roof and upper floors were destroyed. The cause was left under investigation. The government response was close to silence.
Days later, a man walked into Manchester Central Mosque during Ramadan carrying a knife, an axe and a hammer. Worshippers stopped him. No one was harmed. Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated “We have provided up to £40m funding for additional security at mosques, Muslim schools and community centres, and will continue to act to ensure communities are able to live without fear.”
No comparable statement followed the Southall church. No emergency package for the thousands of poorly secured parish churches across England.
National Churches Trust figures have recorded thousands of crimes at church properties in recent years, including hundreds of attacks and a large share of arsons.
Leicester added another chapter at the end of July. St Andrew’s Church on Jarrom Street, a Grade II* landmark built in 1862 to a design by Sir George Gilbert Scott, caught fire after 11 p.m. on July 28. Firefighters fought it through the night. The roof was wrecked. Officials later claimed the most probable cause was accidental. Repairs will take years.
Stoke-on-Trent’s former St Bernadette’s Church was separately ruled a deliberate fire in July. Cumbernauld’s St Mungo’s, a B-listed 1960s landmark, was destroyed in a deliberate blaze last year; no one has been charged and the investigation remains open.
The pattern also repeats in the U.S.
Last week in Cleveland, the former Friendship Baptist Church — a mid-1890s structure that began as a synagogue before becoming a Baptist sanctuary — was destroyed in an early-morning fire.
Nearly sixty firefighters responded. The roof collapsed. The remnants were demolished. Officials first called the cause unknown. Cleveland Fire Lt. Mike Norman later confirmed it was incendiary. “The motives are not believed to be financial. This was not a fire set for insurance money or to acquire the land.”
He called the loss “irreplaceable” and put the damage at about $500,000. Arrests were expected as warrants moved forward. The building had sat vacant for years after the congregation dwindled.
Buffalo’s former St. Ann’s Church and Shrine, built in 1886, was hit twice in four days in July after earlier damage this year. Investigators ruled the July fires arson.
The Diocese of Buffalo sold the church, school and convent in November 2022 for $250,000 to Buffalo Crescent Holdings, Inc., a company affiliated with the Downtown Islamic Center, which planned an Islamic community centre for Buffalo’s Bengali community.
The site had been vacant since parish life ended in 2013. Buffalo Common Council Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope said she had just told city officials the building would probably be set on fire again. “I know it’s been said that it was arson, which is to be expected.”
Preservation Buffalo Niagara director Bernice Radle said: “The St. Ann’s property owners are unresponsive and refuse to secure the building.”
New York City has also suffered losses. On June 19 the 173-year-old South Bushwick Reformed Church in Brooklyn, a Greek Revival landmark designated in 1968, was gutted in a three-alarm fire that brought the steeple down. The FDNY later confirmed it was intentionally set.
Pastor James E. Steward II said: “It was more than just a building. It’s lives and generations of lives that have been touched.” After the ruling he added: “Now we understand it is intentional, which brings another layer of grief to myself, as well as the congregation and the community.”
He added, “Whoever is responsible for this ultimately has to answer to God.” He also said, “We have no known enemies.” The city rejected a restoration plan based on an independent engineer’s assessment and ordered demolition.
Weeks earlier, the vacant First Reformed Church of Astoria in Queens — organized in 1839, rebuilt after an 1888 fire, about 138 years old in its last form — was wrecked in a five-alarm blaze that started in an attached residence. Six firefighters were injured. Rebuild talk was short. Demolition followed.
France has also logged nearly fifty fires or arson attempts on churches and Christian sites in a single recent year. Studies have described a Christian religious building disappearing every two weeks through fire, collapse or deliberate damage.
In May, the 19th-century Église Saint-Cyriaque in Montenach was gutted after a vegetation fire driven by high winds. Mayor Jean-Paul Tinnes said: “The roof is gone, the bell tower is gone. It makes me cry. I’ve been mayor for over thirty years. My children were baptized here, I got married here… It’s a historic building that everyone cherishes. We hope to be able to rebuild and restore it quickly.”
In June, the 1635 Chapelle Sainte-Anne-des-Rochers in Trégastel lost most of its slate roof. The same day, a cloister attached to the cathedral in Condom suffered heavy damage to roofing and more than 4,300 archived volumes.
Historic Christian buildings keep disappearing. When the cause is arson, suspects are often never named. When a plan exists to save the ruin, city halls order demolition.
It’s a sad state of affairs.
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