St. Aspinquid’s Chapel

St. Aspinquid’s Chapel was established by Priest Louis-Pierre Thury at Chebucto (present day Halifax, Nova Scotia) in the late 17th century. The chapel is a natural stone amphitheatre located by Chain Rock Battery on the Northwest Arm at Point Pleasant Park. There are numerous notable people interred in the burial grounds around the chapel and it is also the location of the Mi’kmaq celebration of the Feast of St. Aspinquid (St. Aspinquid's Day), which was conducted through much of the 18th century. During the French and Indian War two Mi'kmaw chiefs fought each other in a battle near the Chapel (1760).

Tradition indicates Thury named the chapel after a Mi’kmaq Chief Aspinquid (Aspenquid), who converted to Catholoicism and drew many others into the faith. Thury arrived at Acadia in 1684 and travelled with St. Aspinquid throughout the region, including present-day Nova Scotia. (During much of the 17th and early 18th centuries, Norridgewock on the Kennebec River and Castine at the end of the Penobscot River were the southern-most settlements of Acadia.)

Chief Aspinquid was the "Chief Sacham of all the Tribes of Indians in the Northern District of North America." During King William's War he was also a political figure who signed a treaty with Massachusetts Governor William Phips on August 11, 1693. Captain Pasco Chubb murdered Chief Aspinquid at Pemaquid in February 1696. Thury, a Mi'kmaq militia and others of the Wabanki Confederacy exacted revenge a few months later in the Siege of Pemaquid (1696). As a result, Aspinquid was made a martyr and became a saint. He is buried at Mount Agamenticus in present-day Maine.

After the death of St. Aspinquid, Father Louis-Pierre Thury officially became the missionary to the Mi'kmaq people at Shubenacadie and Chibouctou (Halifax) (1698). Thury was the first missionary assigned to Halifax.

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