Amazing race: Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries in the Canadian Northwest 1818-1875

• Main Author: West, Bart
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: relig; hisphilso; First Nations
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-3sqk-x284; https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/ba18cde2-596d-47cf-b6e1-1d16d2653621

This paper will provide a brief but comprehensive account of how the two missions worked in competition with one another to Christianize the people of the Canadian Northwest in the nineteenth century. Separate narrative accounts of the missions, including brief biographical sketches of some of the more notable characters, will be given as Chapters Three and Four. The information contained in them, together with material about the fur trade and the First Nations people of the Northwest, forms the basis for a critical analysis in Part Five. The analysis will be directed towards two main areas: the role that the Hudson’s Bay Company’s policies, practices, and employees played in the missions, and characteristics of the organization of the missions that had a significant effect on the overall outcome. A third objective of the analysis is to suggest the foundation of the somewhat un-Christian opinions that each side had of the other and show how those attitudes wasted resources and sowed confusion in the minds of the First Nations people.