Napier's work of St. Boniface Cathedral (built 1839) captures its grandeur and hints at the influence the Roman Catholic Church exerted over the Red River Settlement. One year after this painting was done, Humphrey Lloyd Hime photographed the church, seen below, from the same perspective.

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The Grey Nuns' Convent, now a world-class museum, is seen on the right in this painting. It was built from 1845 to 1850 and has flanked four different cathedrals in three different centuries.

	Interior was 100 feet long by 45 feet wide
	The vault was 40 feet high 
	The stone walls were 28 feet high by 3 feet thick
	The towers stood 100 feet high
	The south tower held three bells

In 1860, the cathedral was ravaged by fire - the proud stone edifice whose graceful turrets were immortalized by the American, Whittier, in his poem

'The Red River Voyageur'

The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.
The bells of the Roman Mission,
That call from the turrets twain,
To the boatman on the river,
To the hunter on the plain!

John G. Whittier - Summer of 1859 

The destruction of the cathedral was a disaster unparalleled in the history of the Red River. (Some hundred years, hundred months and hundred days later, history would incredibly repeat itself...)

In 1859, a young priest, Father Joseph Goiffon, left his native France to become a missionary in the remote territory around Pembina, North Dakota, where tales of the plight of the catholic Francophone and Métis had roused his sympathy. Small and slender-looking in his clerical garb, he seemed ill-fitted for the rigorous life he had chosen following a six-year course in the classics and two in philosophy.
In 1860, the church in Pembina burnt down and Father Goiffon had to administer his widespread parish from St. Joseph, 40 long miles away, by ox cart.
On a late August day that same year, the priest had just returned to St. Joseph after two months with the annual buffalo hunt, caring for the men and their families, and securing his own winter supply of buffalo meat and pemmican. Eagerly, he entered his crude log home, built with his delicate, unskilled hands. Sunlight from the door fell across the dirt floor and rested on a rough table where lay his eagerly-awaited mail. There were letters from home and one from his vicar-general summoning him to St. Paul, Minnesota. That meant a two-month trip by ox cart and he would need to leave at once to avoid the storms of late autumn. But it also meant that he could bring back supplies and a few luxuries, glass for his parchment-covered window and perhaps even a horse.



Father Goiffon left the next morning in company of his neighbours, Paul and Charles Morneau. They made 20 miles the first day. At Pembina, they joined a train of ox carts from Fort Garry. Among the drivers were Sam and Hugh Pritchard and young Johnny Matheson. They travelled over rough country along the Red River, then across the 'grand traverse' - 19 miles of swampland with tall grass almost as high as the oxen’s backs. Several days later they reached St. Cloud and finally St. Paul.
The whole group planned to leave for home the first week in October, giving Father Goiffon 10 days to conduct his business in St. Paul. But the priest was a day late getting finished, so the Fort Garry party went ahead. Proudly riding his new horse alongside the ox carts. Father Goiffon travelled a week with the Morneau, but still did not catch up to the train ahead. Several mishaps caused delays and the priest decided to push on alone because news from Pembina had reached him along the way and disturbed him greatly. There had been no one for several weeks to say mass, to baptize babies and minister to the dying. Already one parishioner was dead and another was barely hanging on to life, waiting to see his beloved priest once more.The horse travelled well and eventually Father Goiffon came up to the Fort Garry party. After a night’s rest, he was determined to go on by himself, although it was the first day of November and rain had begun to fall. The priest camped alone that night in the wet grass, unable to kindle a fire. Awakening, he found the raging rain       

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had turned to swirling snow. Still, he pushed on. Clad only in his summer cassock, a light-weight capote, French boots and a French clerical hat, he started across the traverse, dangerous at any time, a pending disaster for an inexperienced traveller alone in a blinding snowstorm. Before long, the horse became tired and the traveller bedded down under the buffalo robe he carried to wait out the storm. In his inexperience, he had failed to cover his mount. When he awaken a few hours later, he was dismayed to find it had perished.
In despair, he crept under the robe and prayed for deliverance. For several days he lay, his only food a few strips of pemmican and a handful of dried berries. At times he was delirious, at times almost unconscious.
The Fort Garry travellers were many miles behind. They had halted for five days on the edge of the grand traverse, but as November 8 dawned bright and clear, they started on again. Suddenly, Johnny Matheson insisted he heard a sound like a man calling out. At first incredulous, the men searched and found Father Goiffon, half buried in the snow, crying out in delirium. His clothing was frozen to the ground and much of it had to be cut away before he could be lifted and carried to a cart.
For three weeks, the priest lay in a house in Pembina without medical help and with gangrene ravaging the once-frozen limbs. His life was despaired, but help arrived with word to bring him to St. Boniface. He was loaded onto a hand sled, as the roads were too bad for sleighs or carts, Three days later, Father Goiffon was placed in a bedroom in the bishop's palace adjoining St. Boniface Cathedral.
A doctor came from Fort Garry, just across the river, and decided the right leg must be amputated at once and part of the left foot later. The operation was successful and the priest seemed to rally. But on the eight day when the stitches were removed, the large artery burst open and nothing could stop the haemorrhage. Father Goiffon seemed doomed. The last rites were administered, and Father Lestane and Father Simonet watched as the frail life ebbed away. Outside, it was bitterly cold and the wind moaned, rising almost to a gale.
Suddenly the tocsin sounded and cries of FIRE rang out. The cauldron of buffalo tallow melting in the kitchen below had boiled over, blazed up and enveloped the kitchen in flames. Soon, the whole building was an inferno. The priest was dragged on his thin mattress out into the snow where he lay for some time in the bitter cold as flames destroyed the bishop's palace, the cathedral and adjoining buildings.
Then the miracle happened. The intense cold congealed the blood, the haemorrhaging stopped, and Father Goiffon lived!
Forty-eight years later, at the blessing of the 1908 basilica, there walked in the procession a frail old priest with a wooden leg, helped by two canes, for part of the other foot was missing too. It was Father Goiffon, who had come from St. Paul, by special invitation.
This said to be the Christmas miracle in St. Boniface in the winter of 1860.

Tales of Early Manitoba by Edith Paterson