Church goes up in flames in Saskatchewan hours after Truth and Reconciliation Day

All Saints Orthodox Church in Meadow Lake, Sask., a 68-year-old parish filled with hand-painted icons and stained glass, was destroyed by fire Wednesday night — hours after the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. No one was hurt. The cause has not yet  been released.

Efron Monsanto
  |   October 01, 2026   |   News   |   3 Comments

 

A church in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, has been destroyed by fire, hours after the country marked the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30.

Fire tore through All Saints Orthodox Church on the night of Wednesday, September 30. By Thursday morning, photos posted by parishioners and local residents showed the building gutted, its roof gone and its walls charred.

Rebel News has confirmed with a City of Meadow Lake employee and the city's fire chief that the fire crews are handling the damage.

Meadow Lake is a city of roughly 5,000 people about 250 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, bordering the Flying Dust First Nation. All Saints is a small, parishioner-run Orthodox congregation. Regular services draw a couple of dozen people, with attendance rising around the major feasts, parishioner Kent Vidal told local outlet meadowlakeNOW. The building would have turned 70 in 2028.

Vidal told meadowlakeNOW the church held artwork, icons and stained glass windows that will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace, and said the parish will not hold a service this weekend while members decide on next steps.

The parish posted on its Facebook page regarding the loss:

It is with tremendous sorrow that we inform you all that our beloved All Saints parish burned in a fire last night. No one was hurt, for which we are immensely thankful. While our sure hope in Christ is not confined to any structure, we still mourn the loss of our beautiful hall, its many icons, and the years of care that were lovingly poured into the sacred space.

The cause of the blaze has not yet been made public. Local media report it remains under investigation.

Rebel News has reached out to Meadow Lake RCMP and the Meadow Lake Fire Department for details, including whether the fire is being treated as suspicious, whether any witnesses have come forward, and whether police are seeking video footage from the public. We will update this story when they respond.

The timing is impossible to ignore. The fire broke out on the evening of September 30, the federal holiday created in 2021 to mark the legacy of residential schools. Since May 2021, when the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced the possible discovery of unmarked graves at the former Kamloops residential school — a claim that remains unconfirmed by excavation — well over 100 Christian churches across Canada have been burned, vandalized or desecrated, according to tallies compiled by Rebel News and other outlets. Many of the arsons have gone unsolved.

The fire is also the latest in a string of church fires in northwestern Saskatchewan specifically.

In 2022, Meadow Lake RCMP investigated a church fire on Waterhen Lake First Nation, about 60 kilometres north of the city, that was determined to be suspicious in nature. In September 2024, the St. George Anglican Church in Loon Lake, built in 1939, burned to the ground, and a man was later charged with arson.

Rebel News has been documenting the wave of attacks on Canadian churches since 2021 through our SaveOurChurches.ca campaign and the documentary Church Under Fire. Our reporters have travelled to burned-out parishes from British Columbia to New Brunswick to ask the questions police and the mainstream media too often won't: who did this, and why has so little been done to stop it?

Rebel News will update this story as more details are confirmed. This story is still developing.

UPDATE: Rebel News received a response from Meadow Lake RCMP, who said the cause of the fire is still being investigated. 

On October 1 around 2 a.m., Meadow Lake RCMP received a report of a fire at a church on 2nd Street East in Meadow Lake. Fire and EMS also responded. Officers determined there were no injuries, however the church was destroyed by fire. Fire investigators with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency are currently working to identify the cause and origin of the fire. As this work is ongoing, we have no further information to share at this time, including any speculation as to whether the fire is suspicious or not.

Please donate to support our investigation into Canada's church arsons!

Latest News

Fire destroyed All Saints Orthodox Church in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan — built by Ukrainian immigrants in the 1950s — on the night of September 30. The cause has not been determined, and Rebel News founder Ezra Levant is heading there to report from the ashes: a flight to Saskatoon, a three-hour drive and a same-day turnaround to get the story out fast.

When a church burns in a small town most newsrooms have never heard of, Rebel News shows up. This kind of journalism costs money — flights, fuel, accommodations. If you believe it matters, please chip in to help cover Ezra's trip to Meadow Lake and keep our reporters on the road, shining a light on a crisis the mainstream media would rather you never see.

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Efron Monsanto

Head of Video

Formerly Hamilton-based, now Toronto man and Head of Video Production for Rebel News, Efron Monsanto joined as an intern in 2017 and has been a Rebel ever since. While witnessing Canada succumb to government overreach through the powers of un-elected medical bureaucrats, he became a video journalist. Documenting police and municipal thuggery alike, he strives to shine light on the darkness that is covering Canada’s liberty.

https://t.co/rwEHlIyaHM

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COMMENTS

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  • Lizabeth Sawyer
    commented 2026-10-03 15:22:36 -0400
    It seems to me that this terrible sequence of events, the burning of churches, has more to do with the unsubstantiated belief that First Nation children were abused at residential schools and buried in unmarked graves. NDP Member of Parliament, Leah Gazan had proposed a bill to criminalize residential school denialism which, fortunately, did not pass. 12.1 million went to the First Nation band in that area and thus far, no bodies have been exhumed. The spate of burnings started in in May and June 2021 just after CBC announced news of potential unmarked graves by the Kamloops residential school in May2021. It seems like the First Nations involved are not so interested in the truth.
  • Bruce Atchison
    commented 2026-10-01 20:02:58 -0400
    It angers me to know that few folks will even hear of this outrage. Jihadists and leftist do-gooders keep attacking churches and nobody seems to care. In fact, people on the left laud such vandalism. And any one saying we Christians don’t suffer persecution here in Canada need to wake up. More than 120 churches burned or were vandalized since 2021.
  • Marilyn Hagerman
    commented 2026-10-01 19:05:11 -0400
    Canada is a cesspool of Islamic jihadists, unvetted Muslim immigrants – practicers of Sharia law, terrorizing Jewish Canadians – all given free rein by Carney and his Markist crew! Carney just sent billions to Palestine – home of Hamas and the IRGC terrorists!! These people are taught from childhood to hate Jews and Christians…..to follow sharia law that advocates killing first all Jews, then all Christians. Well over 100 churches have been set afire and burned to the ground since this massive influx of so-called asylum seekers. Coincidence??