The White Woman’s Burden- Protestant Missionaries and Encounters with the “Other"

• Main Author: Davison, Elizabeth
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Mississauga 2023
• Subjects: Northwest Territories; Canada; Augusta
• Online Access: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/prandium/article/view/40027

With a severe climate, low settler population, and harsh living situations, the northern Canadian mission field created unique gender boundaries that were more fluid than those on missions in other colonial settings. Women on these missions could gain influence and complete tasks that their southern and overseas counterparts could not. The Church Mission Society (CMS) was active in northern Canada, sending missionaries to northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories to convert Indigenous populations. By reading the diaries and correspondence of Charlotte Selina Bompas and Augusta E. Morris, this paper explores how women gained influence on the northern Canadian mission field in the late nineteenth century. It describes how these women wrote about and acted upon motherhood, ideal Christian womanhood, and domesticity, and briefly explores the formation of friendships on the mission field. It discusses how these themes furthered the goals of the CMS and allowed Bompas and Morris to achieve influence in a setting where they otherwise would not be able to while still adhering to Victorian norms of femininity.