The Parish of St. James was founded June 17, 1851 on a provisional land grant from the Hudson Bay Company to serve settlers, military pensioners, and retired HBC personnel. Early notes indicate that it extended for seven miles along the Assiniboine River, but checking the maps it appears to be situated at the seven-mile point from the Forks,  and covered 284.4 acres.

Rev. W. H. Taylor was the first rector and is the person who gave the name of St. James to the new parish, in the district of Assiniboia. (Read about Saint James the Apostle. )

The site of the church is near an old Aboriginal Burial Ground. This spot was chosen because there was a ford nearby for people living on the south side of the Assiniboine River to cross over, and because the land had never been flooded. In fact, during the great flood of 1852, settlers camped here to escape the waters, and the rectory that had already been built acted as a refuge for others. The original timbers were washed away, and new lumber had to be rafted down from Baie St. Paul, to be hand-hewn and fitted into place by volunteers from the parish.

This original church served as the centre of parish life until November 26, 1922 when the new church opened. In 1936 the Old Church was condemned; annual services were held on the cemetery grounds to fulfill the spirit of the original land grant and to keep the ground as an ecclesiastic site. The City of St. James and the parish restored the building in 1967, as a Canadian Centennial project, and it was re-dedicated on June 21, 1967. ( For the many visitors who’ve been asking: restoration mainly involved the structure beneath the church, to make it sound, as well as general repairs and appearance. The ceiling and the hardwood floors are ‘original’ in that they were added as improvements while the church was still in use, in Victorian times, probably around the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.)

The Old Church was designated a Provincial Heritage Site on June 25, 1978 (and again in 1998 as the government updated its system).

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