The larger buttresses support the 12 main laminated wooden ceiling vaults, which widen to at their uppermost. Between them is the same block pattern. They meet at a central rosette below the cupola, bordered by small windows that let natural light in. A ceiling fan hangs nearby. Wooden stairs from behind the altar lead up to the cupola from the sanctuary, which has an aluminum ceiling. History Planning for the church began as the Canadian government was building Inuvik itself in the late 1950s, as an administrative centre for the Mackenzie Delta region to replace Aklavik, located more centrally in the delta, which was becoming more and more vulnerable to flooding as it grew. In 1955 The Rev. Joseph Adam, Roman Catholic pastor to the townsite under construction, began looking for an architect to design a church for the local congregation. Brother Maurice Larocque, a Quebec-born missionary with the Church's Oblate Order, took the commission. Larocque had worked in the Canadian North since 1930. Before becoming a missionary, he had worked as a carpenter, an experience that had led to him designing various buildings for the distant communities he worked in despite his lack of formal architectural training. For the new townsite on the delta, he sought to design a church which would reflect the local culture. The environment put some constraints on a potential design. Inuvik is north of the Arctic Circle; at that latitude in North America, permafrost is only 2 metres (6 ft) below ground. Thus, most buildings in the area then and now are built on pilings anchored in the permafrost, elevating them slightly above ground. But that solution would not work for a conventional church due to the possibility of frost heave should the underlying permafrost melt partially. "If we build a church with a steeple and the pilings start to heave, it's going to fall down," Adam told a newspaper later. To deal with that problem, Adam and Larocque decided on a circular building. "If it settles six inches on one side," he told the paper, "it won't show—and we can always jack it up to make it level again." To fulfill Larocque's intent to design a church that reflected the local culture, it would be designed and decorated to emulate an igloo. The circular shape would not by itself mitigate the possible effects of frost heave. To further secure the building, Larocque devised