Across the Prairie in a Motor Caravan: A 3,000 Mile Tour by Two Englishwomen on Behalf of Religious EducationHasell, Frances Hatton Eva
Religion
Across the Prairie in a Motor Caravan: A 3,000 Mile Tour by Two Englishwomen on Behalf of Religious Education
Hasell, Frances Hatton Eva
Missions -- Canada
In 1910 the Archbishop of Rupertsland appealed to the Archbishops of
Canterbury and York to send out clergy to attend to the needs of the
numerous British settlers who were pouring into the country. (Between
1900 and 1920 one million two hundred and fifty thousand persons have
emigrated from Great Britain to Canada.) The Archbishops' Western Canada
Fund was the answer to this appeal. The cause interested me extremely,
and I became one of the collectors for the diocese of Carlisle. This
diocese raised L3,000 and built St. Cuthbert's Hostel in Regina, and
later raised another L1,000 towards the L50,000 needed for the endowment
of the Western Canada missions.
Three missions were started by the Fund in Edmonton, Southern Alberta,
and Saskatchewan respectively, but we are only concerned with the
latter. In this province many small towns had sprung up owing to the
great influx of immigrants (mostly British) and to the rapid railway
construction, while the surrounding prairie was dotted with isolated
farms and hamlets. It was with the special needs of these people that
the Regina Railway Mission had to deal. Accordingly, several clergy and
laymen went out from England, made the hostel at Regina their
headquarters, and visited the surrounding country. They lived in
one-roomed shacks, doing their own "chores," and often driving about
eighty miles on a Sunday in order to take four services a day. They
returned to the hostel once a quarter for spiritual refreshment, rest,
and discussion of their work with the head of the Mission and with each
other.
Meanwhile, a pioneer movement was on foot in the Old Country. At St.
Christopher's College, Blackheath, a specialised training in the matter
and method of religious education had been inaugurated for women
prepared to undertake this branch of social service. I was asked to
become Diocesan Sunday School Organiser for the diocese of Carlisle, and
went to train at St. Christopher's in 1914. There I met Miss Aylmer
Bosanquet and Miss Nona Clarke, and was naturally very interested to
find that these new acquaintances were anxious to go out to Regina and
do Sunday-school work in connection with the Railway Mission. A firm
friendship resulted from this common interest.
Aylmer Bosanquet's plan was to go out with Nona Clarke and live on the
prairie, working amongst the children and supplementing the work of the
clergy in any other possible way. She proposed to finance the expedition
entirely herself. At first the Secretary for the Archbishops' Western
Canada Fund was very dubious about accepting her generous offer, having
been out in Canada himself, and knowing that life in a prairie shack is
exceedingly hard for gently nurtured women. But Aylmer Bosanquet was so
urgent that at last she won the day, and she and Nona Clarke went out to
Regina in 1915. They established themselves at Kenaston, where they
lived in a three-roomed shack and did all their own work, even to the
grooming of the buggy horses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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