"There is but one effectual means of staying the evils we have
occasioned, and of imparting the blessings of civilization, and that is,
the propagation of Christianity, together with the preservation, for the
time to come, of the civil rights of the natives."
- British House of
Commons, Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines (British
Settlements), BHCSP, 7, No.425, 1837
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, indigenous peoples world-wide
experienced the arrival of Europeans, which generally threatened their
traditional way of life. Britain was not unaware of the detrimental
effects of settlement and commerce on the lives of the native people in
the colonies. The 19th century was marked by growing social concern and an
outcry against the inhumane treatment of people, both within Britain's own
borders and abroad. As a Christian society, the British considered-as
did other European countries-the achievements of European culture and
science as the culmination of Christian discipline and dedication. The
19th-century European was blind, however, to the beauties of other ways of
living in the world, as well as to the destructive and exploitative
aspects of European civilization.
The changes in western Canada came like a watershed -
during a period
of 50 - 70 years, one man's lifespan, life on the prairies took on a
totally different pattern.
How would the Canadian West be different had there been no
missionaries? How would the fabric of society look without Christian
churches? In Canada the legacy of the missionary is an aspect of the
European influences which shaped the colonial era, along with that of the
Enlightenment, Victorian values and ideals, Reformation and
Counter-Reformation, and the French Revolution. The role of the church and
missionary is entwined with these other developments, so the questions are
purely hypothetical.
These pages can do no more than highlight the lives and work of people
for whom faith was the sole motivation and inspiration. European in their
upbringing, human in their limitations and 19th-century Christian in their
interpretation of life and its promise of grace, the missionary brought
both gift and peril. While many of Canada's Aboriginal peoples
identify with the Christian faith and the missionaries among them, many
communities are struggling with the institutional approaches born of the
mission movement and state policy.
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