Joseph Connolly 1840-1904
This prominent Ontario architect was born in Ireland and received his professional training there under J. J. McCarthy, a leading nineteenth century Catholic church architect. By the early 1860s Connolly had settled at Toronto where he soon established a special practice designing buildings for the burgeoning Roman Catholic community across Ontario. This church, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception (1876), in the style of the thirteenth century French Gothic, is one of his earliest known structures and is widely considered to be his finest. Among the other religious buildings Connolly designed are the James Street Baptist Church (1879), in Hamilton, one of his few Protestant structures, and St. Peter's Cathedral-Basilica in London (1880). Connolly also designed industrial and residential buildings as part of his extensive practice.
Plaque via Alan L. Brown's site Ontario Plaques. Full page here.