Completed in 1877, the Saint-Venant church is one of the few of that era to have survived the French-Canadian population growth in the Eastern Townships. The first parish priest relied heavily on a missionary subsidy and his own family wealth and he was never able to recover the $1,046 he spent in building the large stone presbytery. (The bishop agreed with the parishioners that the building was too extravagant.) This did not discourage the colony's promoter, Father Champeaux, from building a convent in 1879 to serve the nuns who had arrived to teach two years earlier. The poverty of the parish, however, made it difficult to convince religious orders to maintain a presence there. The beautiful hand-crafted pine interior was finally completed in 1897, even though the parishioners had been able to pay little towards the $462 they had already contracted for the construction of the church.
