A Brief History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Quebec

A Brief History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Quebec The first missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in Quebec in 1833. Early converts left for Kirtland, Ohio, to gather with the main body of the Latter-day Saints as they eventually moved to the Intermountain West in the United States. There were no known members of the Church in Quebec for several decades after the 1840s. The Church organized the Eastern States Mission in 1893, which included Eastern Canada in its boundaries. Early records indicate that Latter-day Saint missionaries made sporadic visits to Quebec in the early 1900s. With the founding of the Canadian Mission in 1919, based in Toronto, missionaries began to serve on a permanent basis in Montreal. The mission president, Charles H. Hart, organized the Montreal Branch on September 16, 1928, with James McCance as branch president. In 1942 the Church purchased the first meetinghouse in Quebec on St. Joseph Boulevard in Montreal. Before 1960, missionaries spent most of their time teaching the English-speaking people of Quebec. Thomas S. Monson, the mission president at the time, permanently opened the work in French by assigning French-speaking missionaries on April 20, 1961. On June 10, 1970, the Church changed the name of the Canadian Mission to the Ontario-Quebec Mission and two years later, on July 14, 1972, divided the Ontario-Quebec Mission to create the Quebec Mission. Two years later, on June 20, 1974, the name of the mission changed to the Canada Montreal Mission and has remained the same ever since. In 1967, Montreal hosted the World’s Fair. The Church opened a pavilion after the fair as part of the exhibition called Man and His World. Hundreds of thousands of people visited the pavilion over the next several years. This marked the beginning of important growth of the Church in Quebec, particularly among the French-speaking people. Whereas in 1970 there were only 1,278 Latter-day Saints in Quebec, by 1980 there were 3,297; by 1990, 6,815; and by the year 2000, 8,745. Elder Thomas S. Monson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles organized the first stake in Quebec (and the first French-speaking stake in North America) on June 18, 1978. The new stake included the Drummondville, Hochelaga, Laval, Lemoyne and Papineau (renamed Mascouche in 1989) Wards, along with the Valleyfield, Gatineau (formerly named Outaouais), Trois-Rivières and Zarahemla Branches. Church President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the Montreal Quebec Temple on June 4, 2000. The temple closed in June 2014 for extensive repairs and renovations and will be rededicated on November 22, 2015. Today, 11,375 Latter-day Saints in Quebec live in three stakes and 38 congregations. They come from all walks of life and are active in politics, academia, interfaith councils, service in the community and disaster relief. Mormons in Quebec are committed to making their province a wonderful place to live.