The Diocese of the Arctic was formed in 1933 and incorporated in 1961; however, the administrative boundaries of the Anglican Church in the Northwest Territories have changed many times. In 1884, the Anglican Church created the Diocese of the Mackenzie River and it included parts of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. In 1891, the Diocese of Selkirk was established and split off the Yukon from the Diocese of the Mackenzie River. In 1933, the Diocese of the Mackenzie River was abolished and the Diocese of the Arctic established. The new diocese consisted of the former Diocese of the Mackenzie River and parts of the Dioceses of Moosonee and Keewatin. It stretched across northern Canada from the Yukon-Alaska boundary to the Quebec-Labrador boundary and included the Ungava Peninsula and the Canadian islands north of the mainland. In 1970, the Episcopal District of Mackenzie River was established, however it rejoined the Diocese of the Arctic in 1974. Today, the Diocese of the Arctic spans the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Nunavik (Arctic Quebec). Originally the See city was in Aklavik with All Saints as the Pro-Cathedral, but in 1972 the See city became Iqaluit, when the Episcopal District of Mackenzie River as formed. The Diocese of the Arctic had has six bishops, Archibald Lang Fleming (1933-1949), Donald Ben Marsh (1950-1973), John Reginald Sperry (1974-1990), John Christopher Richard Williams (1991- 2002), Andrew Atagotaaluk (2002-2012), and David W. Parsons (2012-). The Diocese has also had several Suffragan Bishops, starting with Henry George Cook.
The Episcopal District of the Mackenzie formed in 1970 from part of the Diocese of the Arctic. It was later reabsorbed by the Diocese of the Arctic in 1975. Henry G. Cook was the Bishop of the district.
Maurice Beauregard was born in 1912 in Roxton Falls, Quebec. He was ordained as an Oblate Priest on June 29, 1941. He came to the Northwest Territories in 1942 and his first assignment was in Fort Norman. He ministered to the communities of Norman Wells, Camp Canol and Fort Norman until 1947. From 1947 to 1949, he was the Superior-Administrator in Aklavik, although he also provided services to the people of Arctic Red River. While in these postings, Father Beauregard learned to speak English and Hare, a dialect of North Slavey. In 1949, he returned to south eastern Canada for medical reasons. He returned in 1952 to serve in Yellowknife where he participated in projects such as the building of Saint Patrick's Church. From 1963 to 1969, he served in Fort Smith. In 1969, he was transferred to Fort McMurray where he remained until 1981 when he was transferred to Edmonton. Father Beauregard died on May 3, 1998.
Bern Will Brown was born in Rochester, New York in 1920 and came north in 1948 as a priest with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. In his first fourteen years in the north, he worked in a variety of locations, including Fort Norman (Tulita); Fort Franklin (Deline); Goldfields, Saskatchewan; Fort Chipewyan, Alberta; Aklavik; Fort McMurray, Alberta; and Nahanni Butte.
In 1962 Father Brown was sent to Colville Lake, only a short distance north of the Arctic Circle, in the traditional homeland of the Hareskin (North Slavey) Dene. On the shore of the lake he planned and built a log church, “Our Lady of the Snows”, in what was soon a growing community of log buildings. In 1971, he left the priesthood and married Margaret Steen of Inuvik; the couple remained in Colville Lake and continued to be active members of the community.
In addition to his regular duties, Father Brown performed routine medical work and dentistry and has been a fire warden, dogcatcher, storekeeper, postmaster, and newspaper editor. He was also a prolific artist, creating many paintings and photographs, and published five books. Bern and Margaret Brown built and operated the Colville Lake Lodge as well as a small museum and art gallery.
Bern Will Brown died on July 4, 2014 at the age of 94.
In 1861, Bishop Grandin selected a site for an Oblate mission which he called Notre Dame de la Providence. Six years later, four Grey Nuns (Sister Adeline Lapointe, Sister Michel des Saints, Sister Amant, and Sister Elizabeth Ward) and two lay missionaries (Domitelle Letendre and Domitelles Lortie) arrived in Fort Providence to establish a boarding school and hospital. In 1927, a new residential school was built to accommodate students from as far off as Fort Smith and Aklavik. This institution was closed in 1958 and replaced with a new day school named after Sister Elizabeth Ward.
Pierre Jean Baptiste Duchaussois, OMI, was born in Walincourt, France on August 4, 1878. He was ordained in 1903 as a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He was sent to Canada where he worked at the Sacred Heart Juniorate in the Sacred Heart parish from 1903-1906, and taught at the major seminary in Ottawa from 1906-1913. He was then sent west to the St. Joachim's parish in Edmonton from 1913-1915. From 1915-1921, he explored northern Canada in order to write about the missions of the far north. From 1921-1924 he lived in France, writing and giving speaking engagements. He spent time in Sri Lanka from 1924-1929, returning to Canada in 1929. From 1932-1935 he visited South Africa and Zaire. Returning to France for his health, he also worked on the production of his film "Aux glaces polaires". He died in Nice, France on November 9, 1940.
Pierre Duchaussois was a prolific and popular writer, speaker and teacher. His publications on northern Canada include "Les soeurs grises dans l'extreme-Nord: cinquante ans de missions" (1917), English version "The Grey Nuns in the far North 1867-1919" (1919); "Aux glaces polaires, Indiens et Esquimaux" (1921, 1928), English version "Mid snow and ice: the apostles of the North West" (1922); "Apotres inconnus: vie anecdotique des Freres coadjuteurs dans les missions arctiques" (1924), English version "Hidden apostles, or, our lay brother missionaries" (1937); "Femmes heroiques: les Soeurs Grises canadiennes aux glaces polaires" (1927, 1928, 1933, 1959). He was awarded the Prix Montyon de l'Academie francaise in 1921 for "Aux glaces polaires", and the Prix Juteau-Duvigneau for "Rose du Canada" in 1933.
Archibald Lang Fleming was born at Greenock, Scotland on September 8, 1883. Upon leaving school, he entered the firm of John Brown and Company, the famous shipbuilders of Clydebank and it was during his years in Glasgow that he became interested in mission work. In 1906, he went to Canada to train at Wycliffe College in Toronto. His interest in the Inuit people and mission work and an appeal from Bishop George Holmes of Moosonee for a young man to work in Baffin Island, led Fleming to establish a mission at Lake Harbour on Baffin Island in 1909. In 1912, Fleming returned to college where he was ordained a deacon in 1912 and a priest in 1913. He returned to Baffin Island in 1916, however, because of ill health was only able to undertake light work. After crossing of the Foxe Peninsula, he was made a member of the Royal Geographic Society. Until his first appointment as archdeacon of the Arctic in 1927, he served first as financial secretary and chaplain to Wycliffe College and then as rector of Old Stone Church in Saint John, New Brunswick. His travels as bishop of the Arctic earned him the title "The Flying Bishop." He was author of "The History of Saint John's Church, Saint John, New Brunswick" (1925) and "Archibald of the Arctic" (1956). He died on May 17, 1953 in Toronto, Ontario.
Ben Hall was born in Birmingham, England, in 1918 and married Nancy Pratt in 1951. They immigrated to Ontario in 1957 and Ben joined the seminary that same year and became an Anglican priest. In 1963 he accepted a call from the Bishop of the Arctic and moved to Hay River, NWT. During Ben Hall's time in Hay River (1963-1970) he ministered to the residents of Hay River, Fort Providence, and Pine Point. He was very involved in Boy Scouts in the North as well. Ben left the NWT in 1970, and he passed away in 2009 in Grande Prairie, AB.
Initially, William Hoare left Ottawa for Herschel Island to act for the Anglican Church as a missionary. He returned after five years and married Catherine Cowan, who had been training to be a nurse in Ottawa. In 1920 they traveled to Aklavik, where they were to establish an Anglican mission. The couple remained in the north until 1931, with William Hoare eventually working for the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (R.C.M.P.) until 1931, when they returned to Ottawa.
Charles Joseph-Eugène de Mazenod founded the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Congregation of the Catholic Church, in France in 1815. In 1841, the first group of Oblates arrived in eastern Canada and by the late 1840s, they had taken their missionary work to western Canada. In an effort to introduce Christianity to the Indigenous people, they established missions in northern Saskatchewan and northern Alberta. The Oblates continued to expand the range of their work, pushed further northward, and eventually established missions along the Mackenzie River and on the arctic coast. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a number of Oblate Fathers working in the Mackenzie Delta and arctic coast region, particularly Fathers Metayer and LeMeur, began recording the life stories and legends of local Elders and artists. Through the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s, the Oblates became involved in a number of other projects to document the history of the local Indigenous population. These projects included gathering genealogical information, traditional place names, and producing Indigenous language dictionaries. In the 1970s, Father LeMeur began working with CBC radio in Tuktoyaktuk. He hosted a radio show that featured legends and life stories of local residents. Often the broadcasts included both Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun and English translations of the same story. The radio show provided Father LeMeur with both a venue to broadcast the recordings already collected and a means of continuing the recording work.
Father William A. Leising, whose work was chronicled in the film “Arctic Missions of the Mackenzie,” which he narrated, died May 10, 2007, in Medford, Ore. Father Leising was born on March 31, 1913, in East Amherst to George and Mary Leising. He attended St. Mary School in Swormville, St. Jerome in Kitchener, Ontario, and St. Bonaventure College (now University). He also attended Blate College of Philosophy in Newburgh, and Oblate Seminary, Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He was ordained in 1940 in Washington by Cardinal Francis Spellman. From 1940 to 1965, Father Leising served as a missionary pilot, dentist and rescuer near Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. He also served as a chaplain to many mining companies. During this time he learned the Dëne Sųłıné (Chipewyan) language and served as a dog sled missionary. He spent his summers as a riverboat pilot and engineer, assisting the bishop on mission visitations. In 1965, after three bouts of hepatitis and a ruptured gall bladder, Father Leising moved to the Diocese of Belleville, Ill., where he directed a radio station.
In 1858, the Roman Catholic Church opened the Sacred Heart Mission at Fort Providence. From there, missionaries were sent to various communities along the Mackenzie River. In 1858, Father Henri Grolier became the first member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.) to visit Fort Simpson. His visit was followed by the arrival of Bishop H. Grandin in 1861 and Father Emile Grouard in 1866. In 1867, the first Grey Nuns arrived at Fort Providence to work with the Oblate Fathers. Between 1858 and 1894, many other members of the Oblates visited Fort Simpson to conduct religious services. In 1894 Father Laurent Brochu became the first resident priest at Fort Simpson, remaining there until 1903. The mission at Fort Simpson continued to grow and eventually the headquarters of the Sacred Heart Mission was moved to Fort Simpson from Fort Providence. In 1916, the Roman Catholic Mission opened its first hospital in Fort Simpson, l'Hopital Ste. Marguerite [St. Margaret's Hospital]. When this accidentally burned down in 1930, a second facility was built and was in operation by 1931. In 1917, the Sacred Heart Mission opened its first school, a residential school, in Fort Simpson. Other members of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate who worked at the Sacred Heart Mission in the early twentieth century were J. Turcotte, Father J. Sareault, Father L. Gosselin, Father H. Tesniere, J. Dessy, Father F. Turcotte, J. Lusson and Father Henri Posset.
The provision of western education in Fort Providence began at the Providence Mission School in 1867, sometimes known as “Our Lady of Fort Providence Residential School” but more consistently known as the “Sacred Heart Mission School” or “Sacred Heart Residential School” (“École du Sacré-Coeur” in French). The school was operated by the Grey Nuns and initially was meant to provide a boarding and day school for Hudson Bay Company employee children. It soon focussed on orphaned and needy children and is known as the first residential school in Canada’s north, although other sites of shorter duration possibly predate Sacred Heart.
Sacred Heart Residential School took in both day pupils and residential boarders. It was chronically under supported, and the Grey Nuns threatened to close or possibly did close it in 1881/82, and reopened with Federal Government funding later in the 1880s. The original log structure was expanded in 1912, and a new three story school built in 1930. An extension was added to this in 1948.
Students came from communities throughout the north, and even as far south as Fort McMurray and Fond-du-Lac. In later years children came from primarily the Deh Cho region; home communities included Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Fort Liard, Wrigley, Norman Wells, Tulita, Ptarmigan Point, Yellowknife, Fort Smith, Trout Rock and Hay River, and sometimes others. It is unclear when the residential school closed, as historical sources give dates ranging from 1953 to 1960, but the Federal Elizabeth Ward Elementary School opened in 1958 and Sacred Heart Residence likely closed in 1959.
The first Anglican clergyman to arrive in Fort Simpson, Archdeacon James Hunter, established St. David's Anglican Mission in Fort Simpson in 1848. Hunter laid the groundwork to have a mission house built; however, he left Fort Simpson in June 1859. His successor, Reverend William West Kirkby was instrumental in building the church and mission house, as well as a school. The first St. David's Church officially opened at Easter 1861. When the Reverend William Carpenter Bompas was made the first Bishop of Athabasca in 1874, he chose Fort Simpson as his headquarters and St. David's Church became a Cathedral. Bishop Bompas and his wife shared it with the Reverend that succeeded Kirkby, William Day Reeve. When the Athabasca region was divided again, Reeve became the Diocese of Mackenzie River and Bompas moved to the Yukon. The old mission house was destroyed by fire during the winter of 1895-1896 and everything was lost. The second mission house still stands on the bank of the Mackenzie. The original St. David's Church was torn down and a new chuch was built between 1923-1927.