Medley was no ordinary colonial bishop. A Tractarian and follower of the Oxford Movement, he had spent his career in the Diocese of Exeter supervising church restorations according to the principles of the Cambridge Camden Society, also known as the Ecclesiological Society. The movement held firm convictions about what made a church authentic: structural elements like rafters must be visible, not hidden behind plaster ceilings. The chancel must be clearly separated from the congregation. Open bench seating must replace enclosed box pews. Fredericton's existing wooden parish church met none of these standards. When the Anglican Diocese of Fredericton was established in 1845 with Medley as its first bishop, he saw his chance to build a cathedral that embodied every ecclesiological principle, transplanted wholesale from Norfolk to New Brunswick.

Frank Wills followed his employer across the Atlantic and supervised the cathedral's construction. The Ecclesiological Society in England, despite its influence on the design principles, was not entirely pleased: its newsletter, The Ecclesiologist, questioned Medley's choice of St. Mary's Snettisham as a model, deeming it "magnificent as a parish church" but perhaps insufficient for a cathedral. Medley pressed ahead regardless. Lieutenant Governor William Colebrooke laid the cornerstone on October 15, 1845, and while the building rose, Wills designed a separate chapel of ease -- St. Anne's, built in just eight months between 1846 and 1847 -- so that services could continue during construction. The cathedral was finally consecrated in 1853, its west window a "virtual likeness" of Snettisham's, crafted by stained glass artist William Warrington, who had restored the Norfolk original just seven years earlier.

The cathedral endured its first major crisis on July 3, 1911, when lightning struck the spire and the resulting fire destroyed it along with the choir. It was rededicated on August 24, 1912, with the original clock -- erected by Dent and Company of London in 1853 -- as the only element of the spire to survive. Nearly a century later, on August 6, 2006, a fire broke out in the bell tower again. This time, the sprinkler system activated before the flames could spread, but the water caused significant damage to the choir area below. Complete repairs took several months, during which the cathedral stood closed. The building's capacity to absorb these shocks and emerge intact speaks to the solidity of its construction -- and to the community's determination to preserve it.

Inside the cathedral, a four-manual Casavant Freres organ console, Opus 2399, fills the nave with sound. Built in 1957 and renovated in 1981, it replaced an instrument installed after the 1912 fire. The organ is part of a broader musical tradition that stretches back to the cathedral's earliest days, when Medley's vision of proper worship demanded not just correct architecture but correct liturgy. The succession of deans who have served here -- from Francis Partridge and Charles D. Schofield in the early decades to the present day -- maintained the cathedral as a living church rather than a museum. Services still follow the rhythms Medley envisioned, in a building whose proportions and details still argue, as they were designed to, that medieval English Gothic was the truest form of Christian architecture.

The Historic Sites and Monuments Board described Christ Church Cathedral as "one of the best examples of ecclesiological Gothic Revival architecture in Canada," noting that it "established an architectural pattern followed in the design of many large and small churches in 19th-century Canada." That legacy is visible in Anglican churches scattered across the Maritime provinces and beyond, their pointed arches and exposed timbers echoing the principles Medley carried from Exeter. The cathedral sits at the heart of downtown Fredericton, a few steps from the Saint John River and the provincial legislature, its spire a landmark visible long before the surrounding streetscape comes into focus. What Medley built was not just a church but a statement: that a colonial outpost deserved architecture as serious and as beautiful as anything in England.