Manitoba Provincial Heritage Site No. 31
Trappist Monastery Ruins
rue des Ruines du Monastere,
St. Norbert
Designation Authority: Honourable Judy Wasylycia-Leis,
Minister of Culture, Heritage and Recreation
Present Owner: The Province of Manitoba
Monsignor Ritchot, parish priest of St. Norbert, and Archbishop Taché of St. Boniface invited five Cistercians of the Trappist Order from the Abbey of Bellefontaine, France, to establish a monastery here in 1892. The community was named Our Lady of the Prairies. The Romanesque Revival church was built in 1903–04 and the connecting monastic wing in 1905. The guesthouse was erected in 1912 on the foundations of the first church building. This self-sufficient monastery included milking barns, stables, a cheese house, apiary, sawmill, and cannery.
By 1978, the Trappists had moved to a site near Holland, Manitoba, to protect their contemplative life from the effects of urban sprawl. Fire gutted the vacated church and residential wing five years later.
