The Road to the Rapids: Nineteenth-Century Church and Society at St Andrew's Parish, Red River

Laurie C.C. Stanley-Blackwell is an associate professor of history at
St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and the co-author of
Canadian Studies: A Guide to the Sources (which can be found at
http://www.iccs-ciec.ca/blackwell.html).

This compact volume captures the complexities of the Native–Christian
encounter in a case study of the Red River Parish of St. Andrew’s.
During the early 19th century, this frontier community, situated near
the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, was a unique blend of
European and aboriginal traditions. The Anglican Church became a potent
force in this mix, as the London-based Church Missionary Society gained
prominence in the Red River region. With their Anglo-Christian ethic and
sedentary agriculturalist tradition, the CMS missionaries saw themselves
as bearers of a higher form of civilization and spirituality. Their
ultimate goal was the creation of “a little Britain in the
wilderness.”

Robert Coutts’s compelling study introduces a remarkable cast of
missionaries, many of them indefatigable in their efforts to impose the
“civilizing benefits” of farming as well as Indian schools, Sunday
schools, and day schools. This agenda brought the Church Missionary
Society into collision with the Hudson’s Bay Company as well as the
traditions of the buffalo hunt and fur trade. However, Coutts
demonstrates that mutual adaptation was a major theme in the history of
St. Andrew’s Parish where there was no single consistent pattern of
conflict. Church and Company became allies to form a nucleus of order in
the region. The English-speaking Métis also devised a strategy of
coexistence. They were not passive recipients of cultural change, but
were “ultimately selective in their adaptation to new customs and
practices,” forging a singular blend of the old and new. For them,
there was little tension between “the hunt” and “the farm.”
Their ability to balance these economies showed them to be progressive
and flexible. Coutts’s study proves that the old paradigm of
“civilization” versus “savagery” should be laid to rest as a
hoary myth.

The mid-19th century was a turning point in the evolution of St.
Andrew’s Parish. External influences crowded in on this once
“isolated enclave.” The Church’s power accelerated and it began to
move away from its frontier mission ideals. Clerical leaders eventually
threw their support behind Canadian annexation and positioned themselves
to cater to the growing influx of Ontario farmers and entrepreneurs. The
Church was clearly a catalyst in the decline of this unique community of
“varied cultures and economic strategies” and the emergence of a new
“Protestant-Canadian order” that marginalized the English-speaking
Métis population. This book places Coutts within the new generation of
historians providing a reevaluation of the Red River experience. His
work incorporates the recent scholarship of historians such as Frits
Pannekoek, D.N. Sprague, and Leland Clarke. His revisionist
interpretations are persuasive and temperate, and the extensive
illustrations further enrich the text. Readers will lament the absence
of detail about the Church’s impact on Métis family life, gender
roles, and child rearing. They will also question the disproportionate
amount of attention devoted to building traditions and the author’s
hasty overview of St. Andrew’s Parish between 1887 and 1900. These
caveats aside, the book captures many of the subtle shadings of a story
too often related in black and white.