Expansion West and North
The Expansion Westward and Northward of the Anglican Church, based on the book “Our Heritage,” circa 1946, by Reverend R.J. Pierce.
Fort Douglas in Rupert’s Land, now Manitoba, was founded by Thomas Douglas in 1812. Now known as Winnipeg, it was also known as the Red River colony or Assiniboia. The livelihood of English and Scottish settlers was uncertain, and conditions were harsh. The Hudson Bay Company (HBC) offered no regular spiritual services for those who served them anywhere in the territory.
In 1820, John West became the first Chaplin in Western Canada. In Fort Douglas, he established a school. Shortly afterwards, the first Church building in Western Canada was built. West travelled as far north as Fort Churchill, where he preached to the Inuit people. It was not long before help arrived, enabling local converts to learn how to share their beliefs within their own communities. One of his first converts was a native boy he named after a fellow clergy person, Henry Budd. Born in 1812, Henry became the first North American native ordained as an Anglican priest.
Expansion throughout the west was conducted by the extremely ambitious Bishop Machray (1831-1904), who was appointed Bishop of Rupert’s Land in 1865. And in 1893, Machray unanimously became the first Primate of Canada. Machray believed the church must be self-supporting, produce its own clergy, and administer its own affairs. His first action was to introduce a weekly collection at church services.
Winnipeg would be his chief centre, and he reorganized St. John’s College as well as the Cathedral. Along with a strong group of clergy, their first duty was to transform the Cathedral into the centre of Church life. He was instrumental in improving the music of the Church in the West. Then he sent clergy as missionaries to the isolated settlements throughout Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In addition, they were to teach in his college and train the future clergy of the West.
In 1880, an enormous flow of organized immigration began, and the self-supporting Church under Machray was ready. The city of Dauphin also had a self-supporting church within four years, and this was typical of the speed of development in the 1880s. Western Bishops admirably justified their appointment — Bompas in the north, Horden in Moosonee, Anson in Saskatchewan, whose first service was in Regina, under a “canvas hotel.” Bishop John Maclean’s missionary work with the Indigenous people would travel, at times, a thousand miles by dog team, to cover Northern Saskatchewan. Maclean suffered a fatal accident in 1886 while traveling by wagon. He lay delirious in Edmonton for three weeks without attention; then he lay on a mattress in an open boat for eighteen days, returning by river to Prince Albert, to die in fever eighteen days after he reached home. Maclean established Emmanuel College in Prince Albert to train native clergy. It was one of his greatest accomplishments.
By the turn of the century, Bishop Pinkham and his clergy were labouring with tremendous devotion among the Indigenous Peoples and settlers in southern Alberta. The mission began in Calgary two years after the settlement started, and within three to four months, the Church of the Redeemer had opened, to become in three years the centre of a self-supporting parish, and in four years the Cathedral Church of the Diocese that stands to this day.
Bishops, clergy, and indigenous lay people played significant roles in promoting Christianity and contributed to the conversion of individuals during the eighty years discussed in this article.
Editor’s note: We acknowledge the harm that was done as a result of colonization during the period covered by this article.
The next article covers the rest of Northwestern Canada (the Prairies). Alberta and Saskatchewan would not become provinces of Canada until 1905.
