The Anglican Church and the World of Western Canada, 1820-1970

A.J. Pell is rector of Holy Trinity Cathedral in the Diocese of New
Westminster, British Columbia.

This book had its birth in 1987 at a conference in St. John’s College
at the University of Manitoba. Ferguson took on the task of editor, and
the conference contributors reworked their addresses into the papers
printed in this volume. Conference and book together are part of a
resurgence in recent years of historical publications within and about
the Anglican Church of Canada.

Not a people-and-places chronology of Anglicanism on the Prairies, this
is rather a collection of critical studies of particular persons,
issues, and events. For example, the paper “Father Cockran and His
Children: Poisonous Pedagogy on the Banks of the Red” gives insight
into the roots of the thinking that led at times in the twentieth
century to criminal abuse in the Native residential schools. Most papers
demonstrate, directly or indirectly, the English ethnicity of the
Anglican church on the Prairies and its basis in the predominantly
English financing and staffing of Western Canadian Anglican missions.
The vision, achievements, and foibles of well-known figures from John
West to Bishop Bombas to Eva Hasell are noted and placed in theological,
political, and cultural context.

Overall, the quality of investigative scholarship in this book is high,
although the quality of the writing varies. Historians will find this
volume useful in working toward a clearer understanding of the role of
Prairie Anglicanism in the wider society. Anglicans, clergy and laity
alike, will discover new facets to their church and to many of the
figures who have become icons to Canadian Anglicanism.