Good Intentions Gone Awry: Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast
Good Intentions Gone Awry: Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast by Jan Hare
English | 2006 | ISBN: 0774812702, 0774812710, 9780774812702, 9780774812719 | 307 Pages | PDF | 20.04 MB
English | 2006 | ISBN: 0774812702, 0774812710, 9780774812702, 9780774812719 | 307 Pages | PDF | 20.04 MB
Unlike most missionary scholarship that focuses on male missionaries, Good Intentions Gone Awry chronicles the experiences of a missionary wife. It presents the letters of Emma Crosby, wife of the well-known Methodist missionary Thomas Crosby, who came to Fort Simpson, near present-day Prince Rupert, in 1874 to set up a mission among the Tsimshian people. Emma Crosby's letters to family and friends in Ontario shed light on a critical era and bear witness to the contribution of missionary wives. They mirror the hardships and isolation she faced as well as her assumptions about the supremacy of Euro-Canadian society and of Christianity. The authors critically represent Emma's sincere convictions towards mission work and the running of the Crosby Girl's Home (later to become a residential school), while at the same time exposing them as a product of the times in which she lived. They also examine the roles of Native and mixed-race intermediaries who made possible the feats attributed to Thomas Crosby as a heroic missionary persevering on his own against tremendous odds.