Sure, what will eventually be a grove of cherry trees in Zoe’s Garden is still little more than saplings supported by buckets. The self-sufficient Food Forest is mostly an open field. And the church itself looks exactly like a nearly 100-year-old building in the midst of a complete renovation.
But for Paul, wife Evelyn, daughter Allison and grandchildren Logan and Olivia, the vision is as bright as can be.
The ongoing family project is located in Courval — a small community located a little under an hour west of Moose Jaw on Highway 363 — and centres around the former St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church and its surrounding grounds.
“When it started, it was a lifestyle project for us and it was (Allison’s) idea to expand it into what it is today,” said Paul during a recent visit to the ongoing build. “When we first picked up the project, it was going to be a place for us to come back to our hometown, a place that would be our nirvana, so to speak.
“We set up our campers for a weekend destination and since then it’s grown into a project that’s going to be a food farm, a fruit farm and a way of life, a place for grandkids and kids to come to… someplace that will be bigger than most of us.”
The Beginnings
The church itself carries deep meaning for the Marcil family.
Paul served as an altar boy in St. Joseph’s heyday, when dozens upon dozens of folks from all over the area would travel in for mass. He and Evelyn were married in the church’s Grotto in 1974 and it was rarely far from their minds in the ensuing years.
“There are a lot of things in the church that are going to be maintained, so the local people when they come in and want to see it, they’ll still have memories of it,” Paul said. “Even though it’ll be different, it’ll still be there.”
Work began on the project shortly after the Marcils purchased the church and grounds in 2017. After a massive clean-up effort, the focus turned toward The Church and Cafe’s current and ongoing state.
The interior of the church has been largely gutted, with wood and other supplies being repurposed for construction elsewhere on the site. When completed, the front of the building will feature a small cafe as well as an area for local artists to sell their works, a mini-museum and space for artists to ply their trade, while the rear of the building will act as the family’s living quarters.
As of 2021, the church’s entire basement has been repaired and braced and now includes a water reclamation and storage system that will be part of the self-sufficiency plan for the entire property.
When it comes to the grounds themselves, work is well underway on Zoe’s Garden — a meditative space next to the church’s Grotto that will feature a quarter-acre dedicated to their cousin and niece Zoe, and all babies lost too soon.
Directly adjacent to the Garden will be a massive food forest that will eventually include a wide, wide variety of tree- and bush-borne fruits and vegetables. The rear of the property will include another large vegetable garden, a fish-stocked pond and a large hill that will eventually be covered in wildflowers and can be used to observe the entire surrounding area.
To say the least, it’s going to be something to behold.
“It’s going to be pretty awesome,” Allison said. “We’re basically creating an entire ecosystem not only from the soil up but the human ecosystem that comes with it. With the different creative people and different community members who are connected historically to the project, it all becomes one huge ecosystem around it.
“You see that already, with all the things that people have donated or want to repatriate back to the Courval area. So we’re kind of building that through the future and the history, it’s kind of cool.”
Paul expanded on the impressive amount of help they’ve already had from folks in the area. When they were looking for water storage, a huge tank was donated shortly after. When a fence needed to be installed around the property, more help came down the line. And from museum-worthy items to literal bathroom fixtures, donations for the church itself come in on a regular basis.
“What’s really nice is that the community has really stepped up and wanted to be a part of it,” Paul said. “People can’t wait for it to get started. The fact we’re going to be having food that’s all fresh from on site, everybody is jumping on board with that and can’t wait for it to happen, It’ll be somewhere else for people to visit and enjoy themselves.”
The Church and Cafe
In addition to offering standard cafe fare once things are up and running, the Gallery portion of the project will feature work from a range of amateur and professional artists with a specific in-province focus.
“Inside we’ll have all different makers, many of which we have already started working with,” Allison said. “Everything from painting to pottery, the business model is 100 per cent Saskatchewan-made, nothing will be brought in from outside.”
And the artists themselves will come from all sorts of backgrounds.
“Things like stay-at-home moms with micro-economies and trying to build on them, then more professional artists who want to partner on a commission basis,” Allison said. “Micro-economies kept society in Saskatchewan running for the first 100 years and we tend to not think about that as much. You used to sell your eggs and butter, now you sell jewelry and crafts. So we’ll have that, and everything will be a Saskatchewan vibe, a prairie feel.”
Self-Sustaining in Every Aspect
Perhaps the most impressive part of the whole project is their end game — once the different gardens and groves have reached maturity, the Marcils expect to have enough food to easily support their family and their business.
The plan is to eventually reach the point they’ll be able to donate a decent percentage of their harvest from Zoe’s Garden and Food Forest to those in need, in addition to the entirety of their Sharing and Caring Garden.
That self-sustainability has been a major focus from day one, and carries over into almost every aspect of the build.
“Eventually, the land itself will become its own ecosystem,” Allison said. “There’s a lot of upfront work, but by year three the human input should be substantially less, by year five the human input should be just harvesting and by year 10 there should be no human input at all.
“Eventually, it would be nice to be able to retire and have this as your home, then this should be a situation where you maybe have one employee but you won’t have to constantly be thinking about what has to happen next. So eventually the insanity level of two full-time jobs will go away and it’ll become its own thing.”
The self-sufficiency even carries over into aforementioned repurposing of items on-site — if something can be reused, like the lumber from the church’s interior, the altars that were once full of parishoners and even the mountain of soil removed to create their pond, it will be put to good use.
“We throw nothing away,” Paul said matter-of-factly. “A bent screw isn’t a bent screw, it’ll be used somewhere else. All the wood from inside, the altars from the church, they’re all going to be reused in our own living quarters, as parts of displays, everything that’s in there we’ll have a home for it and nothing will be thrown out.”
A Tourist Destination
When all is said and done, the hope is that the plethora of attractions in the Old Wives Lake area will help draw folks in to check out what The Church Gallery and Cafe is all about.
They’ve already had a host of interested visitors over the last year and a half, and the Marcils are happy to see them — to the point that Allison has already become an impressive tour guide, despite being in the earliest of stages.
“Over the last year, we had so much traffic here during COVID,” she said. “People were driving by constantly and stopping by… you can tell who the people who aren’t local are because they’ll stop and take pictures, or you’ll have someone who’ll jump back in their car and speed off because they’ll think we’ll yell at them for trespassing. We’ve had people from B.C., northern Saskatchewan, all over the place.”
The idea is that once things mature and word gets out, Courval will become part of what will essentially become a driving stop-in-and-relax tour of the entire area.
“You look at the smaller, niche-market restaurants around, people will travel to them because they’re different,” Paul said. “It’s something they want to try, and if they like it they might come back for second, third or fourth visit, who knows.
“It’s also part of the slow-down movement,” added Allison. “You aren’t popping in for a quick coffee kind of thing, there are no to-go cups… we might be off the beaten track, but there are a lot of places within a half-hour drive of here. So it’s about creating those partnerships and having it become a bit of tourist destination. We have a neighbour nearby who has built an entire museum, another who has a blacksmith shop who is willing to do blacksmith tours, so it can all just build and build until it becomes something special.”
A Dream Come True
From the earliest stages, The Church Gallery and Cafe has been a labour of love for the Marcils. It’s easy to see in the enthusiasm with how they talk about the various aspects of their project, and how they spend as much time as they can away from home working on it, living in campers on-site to better get things going on a day-by-day basis.
“It’s easy to look at this like it’s crazy and it’s a bunch of dreamers but there’s a whole 21-page business model behind this that’s been thought through, how you make this and make money while still having what we have out here,” Allison said.
And while the final, most beautiful and productive stage of the whole venture might be a decade away, Paul already knows what it will look like in the end.
“Time isn’t on my side to see the whole thing come to full fruition, but I see it,” he said. “These hedgerows are already here in my mind, the trees are fully grown, the gardens are full, I already see it… it’s going to be something else.”
For much, much more on The Church and Cafe Gallery, including an in-depth look at every aspect of the project and even sponsorship opportunities, be sure to visit their website at www.thechurchcafeandgallery.ca.
