MONTREAL - The St. James United church in downtown Montreal caught fire early Monday morning, but damage was limited.
Alarms sounded around 4 a.m. Monday when the fire began on the third floor of the historic church, which was built in 1887.
A total of 20 firefighters arrived to find the sprinkler system in the rear of the building had been activated to douse the flames, causing minor water damage. The church's Casavant organ was not touched by the water.
"It's just so saddening that we're doing the restoration and now we have to cope with this," said Allen Fuller of the church.
Church managers had recently put in a sprinkler system.
"Thank God we did. The sprinklers went on automatically, and that's what prevented a catastrophe. Otherwise, had we not had that, we would have lost the church," said Fuller.
"We will cope with it, we will recover and the church will continue to live."
So far the cause of the fire hasn't been determined, but the building has been undergoing renovations.
St. James United was constructed in 1889 as a Methodist church, which later merged with the United Church of Canada.
Its Gothic style facade was concealed for decades, finally being revealed to passersby in 2005 when a commercial building was demolished.
In 1996 the federal government designated the church a National Historic Site.
