SAINT BONIFACE

historic district of Winnipeg, southern Manitoba, Canada, at the confluence of the Seine and Red rivers. It was founded in 1818 by a group of French missionaries led by Bishop Joseph Norbert Provencher upon the site of an earlier, unsuccessful settlement by Swiss mercenaries; a chapel was built there under the patronage of St. Boniface. Since then, St. Boniface, with its famous cathedral (1908), has become an important French-Canadian Roman Catholic cultural and religious centre. The grave of Louis Riel (184485), rebellious leader of the mtis (French-Canadians of mixed French and Indian blood), is in the cathedral churchyard. St. Boniface College (1818) is an affiliate of the University of Manitoba. Grain elevators, stockyards, and railway marshaling yards are characteristic of the area. In 1972 St. Boniface, a city that had been incorporated in 1908, was absorbed into the city of Winnipeg along with other municipalities that formed the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg.