Most of the early Methodist
preachers in Canada were American, many of them loyalists. But in 1814 or so the
British Wesleyans sent some preachers to Britain to a post in Nova
Scotia, at the request of the people in that area, but to the distress
of the American Methodists. Over the next while more and more British
Weslyans came. By 1817 there were some 166 followers of the Weslyans and
about 3,301 followers of the American Methodists. By 1820 those numbers
had grown to 744 British Weslyans and 5,991 Methodist Episcopals.
(Oliver, 113)
In 1820 American Methodists in the Upper
Canada were
petitioning the American Conference to get the British Weslyans to stop
competing with them. A number of them also wanted to have a separate
annual conference for Canada. The former of those issues was dealt with
first and an agreement was made that the American Methodists gave up
Lower Canada to the British Weslyans and the British Weslyans gave up
Upper Canada (with the exception of Kingston, which was a military
location, and therefore had a lot of British soldiers). (Oliver 113)
The first Canadian Conference met
on August 25, 1824 and a Missionary Society was formed as an Auxiliary
to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. By May 1827
the American General Conference decided to withdraw jurisdiction from
the Canadian Methodists and in 1828 the first independent Canadian
Methodist Conference met. (Oliver, 114)
However, this separation from the
American church caused some disagreement over whether the agreement with
the British Weslyans still stood. The British decided it didn't
stand, and they sent missionaries to Upper Canada. (Oliver, 117)
In 1833 the Articles of Union
joined British and Canadian churches, making Canada a frontier of the
British church. Indian Missions were not to belong to the English
society. I. K. Mabindisa credits the British interest in Indian missions
as having been largely because of Peter Jones,
a Mississaugan missionary who made a fundraising trip to England in
1831. (Mabindisa 102)
Anyway, the union of the two
churches brought up more disputes and at the first
conference of the Union there was a question about the ordination of
local preachers. Five days after that conference ended some dissenters
met nine miles North of Toronto claiming to be the legal conference of
the Canadian Methodist Episcopal Church, and that those who had joined
the British had actually seceded. (Oliver, 118) Because this lead to
questions of ownership of church property the issue lead almost to
violence and eventually went to court. Chief Justice John Beverly
Robinson decided the case in favor of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. (Pidgeon,
12) Or, in other words, Chief Justice Robinson decided that the Canadian
Methodist Episcopal Church had left the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and
not vice versa.
So, at this point in the story,
there was the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada, with its ties to
Britain and the independent Canadian Methodist Episcopal Church, as well
as several other splinter fractions.
Within the Wesleyan Methodist
Church in Canada there grew up some new conflicts, some of them being
over money. In 1840 the Union broke up, with the British
maintaining possession of Indian Missions. Memberships to the church
decreased and by 1847 they had negotiated to reunite. (Oliver, 124 -
126)
In 1840 the Wesleyan Methodists of
Britain were invited into the Hudson's Bay territories. James Evans
became the General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Missions in the
Hudson's Bay Territories and took both Peter Jacobs and Henry Bird
Steinhauer with him. Robert
Rundle traveled out into the west where he worked for eight years.
Benjamin Sinclair, a native teacher, joined Rundle in 1847 at Edmonton,
and then established the Woodville mission at Pigeon Lake. (Dempsey, vii)
In 1853 the British Conference
offered the job of the western missions to the Canadian Conference,
promising to continue supporting it financially. The Canadian conference
sent out John Ryerson and then Thomas Hulburt (to Norway House), Robert
Brooking (to Oxford House) and Allan Salt (to Rainy Lake). Rev. Thomas
Woolsey was sent in 1855 to Fort Edmonton and Pigeon Lake. (Dempsey vii
- viii)