Our Lady of Victory Church, often called the Igloo Church, is located on Mackenzie Road in downtown Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canada. It serves a Catholic parish of the Diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith. It was established in the mid-1950s, around the time Inuvik was being built; the church was opened and consecrated in 1960 after two years of construction.

Brother Maurice Larocque, a Catholic missionary to the Arctic who had previously been a carpenter, designed the church despite a lack of any formal architectural training, sketching it on two sheets of plywood that are prominently displayed in the building's upper storeys. The round shape, which is painted to mimic an igloo, was chosen to mitigate possible structural damage that might be caused by frost heave. Its unique structural system, "a dome within a dome",Our Lady of Victory, at 1:50 further protects the church with a foundation consisting of a bowl-shaped concrete slab on a gravel bed atop the permafrost and, in the building itself, an intricate system of wooden arches to support the load.

It is the only major building in Inuvik that does not rest on pilings. Wood for the church was floated down the Mackenzie River from Fort Smith, nearly away. Construction was completed without a building permit as the federal government officials in Ottawa who would have issued one could not understand Larocque's blueprints and sent them back to Inuvik.

Today the church is the town's best-known landmark and its most-photographed building. Travel writer Robin Esrock describes it as "a church that doesn't look like any other church on Earth." The interior is decorated with paintings by Inuk artist Mona Thrasher. In the summer months the parish gives tours.

Building and grounds

Our Lady of Victory is located on a lot at the eastern corner of the intersection of Mackenzie and Kingmingya roads in the centre of Inuvik. The surrounding neighbourhood is dominated by residential and commercial developments on similarly large lots, most no taller than two storeys and flat-roofed with thick walls and aluminum siding. Two blocks to the southeast is MacKenzie Square, Inuvik's main park.

The terrain rises gently towards the hills northeast of Inuvik from the east channel of the Mackenzie River delta to the southeast; the church is located at roughly above sea level. The church is set amid a lawn; a chainlink fence runs along the sidewalks at the southern and western sides of the lot; the latter has some evergreens and shrubs native to the area planted along the inside. On the northern side a utilidor, a narrow above-ground tunnel carrying gas and water lines, marks the rear line of the property., viewed in Street View mode.

A short asphalt walkway, lined with white stones, leads from Mackenzie to the church's main entrance pavilion. It is joined by a narrower one, similarly treated, that comes in from the east, connecting to the unpaved parking lot the church shares with the commercial building next door. Surrounding the church is a planting bed, also lined with white stone. The church's sign stands in its lawn to the south; a stone marker protesting legalized abortion is in the western quadrant. Two mature black spruce grow to the height of the pavilion roof on its north side;See accompanying photo another one grows at the end of the row of shrubs along the utilidor at the east corner of the lot.

Exterior

The church building itself is a circular timber frame structure in diameter on a foundation of a reinforced concrete basement on a bowl-shaped concrete slab that itself sits on a metre-thick (3 ft) gravel bed atop the permafrost that is generally found at 2 metres (6 ft) underground at Inuvik's latitude. Its walls are faced in wood siding with large painted rectangular grooves creating an ashlar pattern. Secondary entrances project from the north and west sides of the building. Fenestration otherwise consists of small lancet windows flanked by narrower ones, set with stained glass; there are three bays of these between the rear and front entrances and two between the rear entrances.

At the roofline is a cornice of laminated lumber. Affixed to it on the bays flanking the front entrance are wooden capital letters spelling out John 1:14: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." Between the front and back two wooden corbels straddle the roofline, with a single one between the rear entrances.

The domed roof is sheathed in diamond-shaped aluminum scales. Ribs delineate each of the building's bays. At the centre of the dome is a round cupola, set with very narrow stained glass windows divided by projecting wooden strips. Two loudspeaker megaphones project from its east and west sides. Atop its similarly treated domed aluminum roof is a wooden blue cross. It has light bulbs and is illuminated, along with the cupola interior, during the winter months.Our Lady of Victory, at 10L25

Open wooden steps lead up from the front walkway to the front-gabled entrance pavilion. The main entrance, on a slightly projecting middle section with a gabled top that rises slightly higher, is topped by a Gothic arched transom set with tinted glass divided by two mullions curving outwards. It is flanked near its point by two modern light fixtures. In the entablature above it is a wooden "IHS" Christogram from the middle of which rises the vertical line of a wooden cross at the gable apex.

On either side of the entrance section are recessed narrow Gothic arched windows in molded surrounds set with tinted glass, one horizontal mullion at centre and two curved ones curving inward from the edges, in contrast to those on the entrance transom. On each side of the pavilion is a similarly treated, narrower window. At the roofline of the entrance pavilion is a plain frieze; above it on either side of the entrance projection are louvered vents. At the eaves of the roof a flap of wood hangs down, broad near the bottom and narrow at the top, following the surround of the vents beneath. Behind the pavilion is a more gently pitched engaged gabled face with vertica battens. The northern entrance has a similar pavilion with an intertwined, stylized "AM" in the place of the Christogram, and no cross. At the northeast a smaller wooden-sided utilidor connects to the municipal one behind it. The northeast entrance pavilion has a different wooden decoration on its entablature.

Interior

All three entrances use heavy, opaque, modern metal doors. On the inside, the sanctuary has curved rows of wooden pews on a hardwood floor divided by a central aisle that offers seating for 350. Laminated wooden buttresses flank all the windows; in between them are the painted Stations of the Cross. Every third buttress is heavier and thicker. The walls are finished in shiplap below the windowsill level; above that a chair rail sets off a finish of grooved rectangles similar to those on the exterior.

At the northeast end the altar and baptismal font sit on a dais. Behind the altar is a round-arched alcove faced in shiplap below the springline; above it are the same block motif as the interior and exterior walls. Two small statues of Christ sit on pedestals fronting either side. On the back of the alcove is a crucifix with a sunburst pattern above.

The larger buttresses support the 12 main laminated wooden ceiling vaults, which widen to at their uppermost. Between them is the same block pattern. They meet at a central rosette below the cupola, bordered by small windows that let natural light in. A ceiling fan hangs nearby. Wooden stairs from behind the altar lead up to the cupola from the sanctuary, which has an aluminum ceiling.Our Lady of Victory, at 10:40.

History

Planning for the church began as the Canadian government was building Inuvik itself in the late 1950s, as an administrative centre for the Mackenzie Delta region to replace Aklavik, located more centrally in the delta, which was becoming more and more vulnerable to flooding as it grew. In 1955 The Rev. Joseph Adam, Roman Catholic pastor to the townsite under construction, began looking for an architect to design a church for the local congregation. Brother Maurice Larocque, a Quebec-born missionary with the Church's Oblate Order, took the commission.

Larocque had worked in the Canadian North since 1930. Before becoming a missionary, he had worked as a carpenter, an experience that had led to him designing various buildings for the distant communities he worked in despite his lack of formal architectural training. For the new townsite on the delta, he sought to design a church which would reflect the local culture.

The environment put some constraints on a potential design. Inuvik is north of the Arctic Circle; at that latitude in North America, permafrost is only 2 metres (6 ft) below ground. Thus, most buildings in the area then and now are built on pilings anchored in the permafrost, elevating them slightly above ground. But that solution would not work for a conventional church due to the possibility of frost heave should the underlying permafrost melt partially. "If we build a church with a steeple and the pilings start to heave, it's going to fall down," Adam told a newspaper later.

To deal with that problem, Adam and Larocque decided on a circular building. "If it settles six inches on one side," he told the paper, "it won't show—and we can always jack it up to make it level again." To fulfill Larocque's intent to design a church that reflected the local culture, it would be designed and decorated to emulate an igloo.

The circular shape would not by itself mitigate the possible effects of frost heave. To further secure the building, Larocque devised a unique structural system: The church would have a reinforced concrete basement, built on a gently bowl-shaped concrete slab which itself would have a gravel bed between it and the permafrost as insulation, to prevent heat from the building from melting the permafrost. Despite Larocque's lack of training, "he knows more about architecture than many architects," Adam said.

Larocque had sketched out his plans on two pieces of plywood, which are part of the church's structure today, visible on the stairs to the cupola.Igloo Church – Inuvik, at 6:10Our Lady of Victory, at 2:35 To clear the building for construction and get a building permit, formal blueprints had to be sent to officials with the federal government in Ottawa. Larocque drew some up and sent them, only to have the officials send them back when they were unable to comprehend them.

Work finally began during summer 1958. Gravel for the foundation was quarried at Point Separation, the head of the Mackenzie delta, south of the growing townsite still known only as East 3, and shipped downriver by barge to the construction site. After it was laid into the freshly excavated pit, concrete was poured over it and shaped into the bowl. Once this had set, lumber that had been similarly floated down the Mackenzie from Fort Smith near the territorial border with Alberta, the exterior walls were built on it and by the end of the area's short summer they and the first floor had been completed.Igloo Church – Inuvik, at 6:40

Larocque spent the long winter in a nearby workshop, carefully supervising the assembly of the arches that were to form the domed roof. The 12 main arches were supplemented by 24 secondary ones and 72 smaller arches. His work also aroused some interest from Ottawa since the blueprints had failed to earn a permit, and more generally because he was not a registered architect. When they heard construction had begun nonetheless, they tried to have the work stopped. Bishop Paul Piché hired an engineering consultant to visit the building, who told him it was sturdy enough to last another 200 years.