William Booth in Canada: Descriptions of His Six Visits, 1886–1907

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Few Canadians are unaffected by the Salvation Army. The needy receive a
helping hand, and the rest of us hear the tinkling of bells outside
commercial establishments as Christmas approaches. Leaders of Canada’s
Salvation Army died in large numbers when the Empress of Ireland sank in
the St. Lawrence River near Rimouski on May 29, 1914. The sinking is one
of the best-known events in Canadian maritime history.

Under the circumstances, it is highly appropriate that Gordon Moyles
has written about visits to Canada by the British founder of the
Salvation Army, William Booth. Moyles, a professor emeritus at the
University of Alberta, is a member of the Salvation Army who has written
widely about his church. It would be tempting to describe this book as
an uncritical hagiography, but most of us are hardly in a position to
criticize someone who devoted his life to the have-nots, believed in the
cause, and worked diligently to promote it.

On six occasions between 1886 and 1907, Booth visited Canada. He
regarded the entire world as his area of responsibility, and he
travelled extensively both in Canada and on all continents except South
America and Antarctica—no mean feat considering the discomforts.
Moyles reports Booth’s itineraries and describes the religious
services that he conducted. Moyles’s sources include newspaper
accounts of Booth’s trips as well as primary sources from Salvation
Army archives in the United Kingdom and Canada.