Chapter XXI: Appendix: B

_SPIRITUAL AGENCIES IN LABRADOR_,

SINCE JULY, 1892, AT WHICH TIME WE ARRIVED ON THE COAST.

There is a Wesleyan missionary fifty miles west of Battle, at Red Bay. To visit all round his circuit and return must involve 250 to 300 miles’ travelling. It must be remembered all this visiting is done in a small open boat in summer, at great risk in so dangerous a place as the Straits of Belle Isle; and in winter over the ice with a komatik and team of dogs. The Rev. J. Sidey was there three years, and is now replaced by Rev. J. Antle.[20]

[Footnote 20: These Wesleyan missionaries are supported by the Methodist Church of Canada.]

At Battle Harbour, as is well known to our readers, there is a wooden church, but it has been in charge of a young teacher and lay reader since we have been on the coast.

At Cartwright, thirty miles up Sandwich Bay, is another wooden church and schoolroom combined. Here also is a lay reader and schoolmaster. This would be about 150 miles up the coast from Battle Harbour. The sphere of work does not, I think, extend at all outside Sandwich Bay.

Fifty miles above Indian Harbour, up Hamilton Inlet, is a young Wesleyan minister. He has a small school and chapel on the south side of the inlet. We had the pleasure of taking him in the _Princess May_ to his new sphere of work. His name is the Rev. G. Hollett, and his sphere of work is Hamilton Inlet, I think as far in as the North West river, that is eighty miles further, or 130 from Indian Harbour.

From Indian Harbour to Hopedale the settlers number from 260 to 300, and are very poor and very scattered. The distance by sea is 150 miles, and again consists of a series of long bays and off-lying islands. There is no missionary or schoolmaster anywhere along this part of the coast, though once in the winter one of the Moravians travels over the ice as far south as Cape Harrison with his komatik and dogs, often at great peril to his life. Northward of Cape Harrison are only a few scattered European settlers, mixed among not less than 2,000 Eskimos. These are mostly members of the Moravian Church. The Moravian stations are from 50 to 100 miles apart.

To meet the spiritual needs of all these people, scattered as they are, and of the 25,000 who visit the coast in summer—some 10,000 living on their vessels all the year—we only heard of one clergyman of the Church of England and one Wesleyan minister, with one Roman Catholic priest, visiting during part of the summer. This year, 1893, we did not hear of any peripatetic Wesleyan minister, and the only clergyman was rather in pursuit of health; but we met in the Straits of Belle Isle Bishop MacDonnel and the Rev. Father Lynch, of the Roman Catholic Church. I must mention also that the Bible Society send a colporteur every year to sell Bibles and testaments on the coast, though we did not fall in with him this year, nor do I know how much of the coast he travels over. Last year a tiny schooner, manned by three Salvation Army captains, also visited the coast, partly fishing and partly preaching the gospel. Among the fishermen themselves we met many earnest and pious Christians, and as on the North Sea, so on this bleak coast we have felt God’s presence quite as real and as near in the meetings on board or in the huts as we have in great buildings and comfortable pews in the old country.

Among past workers in Labrador I hear of the Rev. J. G. Curling, Rev. Mr. Hutchinson, and Rev. Mr. Quintain. The last two spent many years in Labrador, while the Rev. J. Bull spent three years at Battle Harbour. The Right Rev. Llewellyn Jones, Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda, has also visited the coast, as did Bishop Field, his predecessor. The Rev. Father Lemoine, labouring among the Montaignais Indians of the interior, also sometimes comes out on the coast during the summer.[21]

[Footnote 21: Bishop Jones sent three visiting clergymen to Labrador this summer 1894.]