Joseph-Norbert Provencher (February 12, 1787 – June 7, 1853) was a Canadian clergyman and missionary and one of the founders of the modern province of Manitoba.

In 1818 he and two other priests were sent by Joseph-Octave Plessis, Bishop of Quebec, to open a mission on the Red River in present-day Manitoba, where the majority of settlers were Irish and Scottish Catholics.

Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, a main share-holder in the Hudson's Bay Company gave the missionaries land on the east bank of the Red River.

Part of the building served as a chapel, which Provencher dedicated to famous missionary, Saint Boniface.

The mission at Saint Boniface was highly successful; he baptized many of the local First Nations and Métis residents as well as many European settlers.

The Canadian settlers resisted his efforts to regularize concubinage with Indian and Metis women and preferred "this liberty of being able to get rid of their wives.

In 1846, despite the misgivings of the superior in Canada, Eugène de Mazenod, Bishop of Marseille and founder of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate dispatched two priests to the vicariate.