St. Vincent de Paul Parish, NOTL

The Parish of St. Vincent de Paul is the direct successor of the many and often interrupted missionary endeavours in the Niagara area since 1626. At first concerned with the native peoples, later French and then English-speaking priests came as chaplains for the troops stationed at Fort Niagara and Fort George.

The first permanent parish with a resident priest was established here in 1826 to serve the pastoral needs of the growing number of Catholics in the Niagara Peninsula and the west-central part of the Province. 

Bishop Alexander Macdonell of Kingston blessed the frame church with its Gothic windows on November 9, 1835. 

Today St. Vincent de Paul, an example of early church architecture in Canada, remains the oldest surviving Catholic Church still used for regular worship in the Province of Ontario.