John McDougall

John McDougall was about nineteen years old when he came with his father to this area. Together with Rev. Woolsey he was left to build the mission on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River.  He was a prolific writer and  much of the information we have today of the settlement from that time is from  his writings. Among other things he wrote a series of adventure books about his life in the West. Physical ability and adventure was important to John, and he recounts many stories of hunts and travels.

John married seventeen year old Abigail Steinhauer and they had three children. They were sent for a while to revive Rundle's mission at Pidgeon Lake. After her death in 1871 he went back East and asked for permission to continue his education. But the church officials felt his work was too important and encouraged him both to return to the west and to marry again quickly. He married Elizabeth Boyd McDougall a distant cousin.

John was offered the job of working for the Hudson's Bay Company at Victoria but declined it, probably due to his father's urgings that he stay working with the mission.

In 1873, when the NWMP were on their way West, the government commissioned John McDougall to make a tour of the area explaining to natives the coming of the police.

Around 1873 he started the Morley mission along the Bow River, and in time (1883) he added an orphanage to the mission. His brother David set up a trading post near to the mission, and often travelled with him as he went to visit native groups. Paul F. Sharp writes in his book Whoop Up Country that:

Despite adverse comment from eastern Methodists, he continued trading with the Indians at Morleyville in partnership with his brother David to combine profits with preaching. To advice that a man of God should remain above the corrupting influences of commerce, McDougall had a ready and spirited defense. Fur trading kept his mission solvent and McDougall was a practical man who believed there "must always be adaptation to conditions, as they are found". (138 - 139)

John attended the treaty signing of both Treaty 6 and Treaty 7.

John worked as Commissioner to the Indians.

John also worked with the federal government and the Doukhobors. He was head of a commission to investigate the Doukhobor land issues in 1906. The official report was submitted on November 25, 1906 and John's opinion about the importance of individual land ownership as a means of inspiring hard work shows in the report. The report blames communism as being the root of the Doukhobor's problems, and recommends that the government reclaim the land the Doukhobor's were living on and force the Doukhobor's to either abide by all the ordinary conditions for receiving a homestead, or else resettle on a reserve. Minor changes were made to the recommendations and then then the government adopted them as policy. On December 28 of the same year, John was appointed Commissioner of Investigations and Adjustor of Land Claims for Doukhobor lands.

In January 1907 the McDougall commission travelled through the Doukhobor villages to advise those Doukhobors whose land was deemed incorrectly held that their land claims were being cancelled. A total of 2503 claims were cancelled, leaving only 136 remaining. A second tour of the Doukhobor villages took place the next month, with the commission accepting requests for homesteads and creating reserves. By the end of the year, only 384 homesteads had been re-applied for, and some 8,175 Doukhobors had chosen to move to reserves. The reserves gave 15 acres per person and were ended in 1918.

 In 1913 he ran as a Liberal candidate for the provincial election, but lost.

John died in 1917 and is buried at Union Cemetery in Calgary, and another summary of his life is available at a Union Cemetery Webpage.

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Sources:

Victoria Settlement Historic Site

John McDougall's own writings.

Friesen, J. W. "John McDougall, Educator of Indians" in Profiles of Canadian Educators.  edit by Robert S. Patterson, John W. Chalmers and John W. Friesen. D.C. Heath Canada Ltd.

Sharp, Paul F. Whoop-up Country: The Canadian American West, 1865-1885. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman. His source for the part quoted is John McDougall, On Western Trails in the Early Seventies: Frontier Life in the Canadian North-West (Toronto, 1911) 219.

Szalaszynj, Kathlyn Rose Marie. "The Doukhobor Homestead Crisis". A thesis for the University of Saskatchewan. 1977.