Algoma was vast wilderness when Bishop Edward Sullivan started missionary work as CPR was being built

 As the Canadian Pacific Railway was being completed Rt, Rev. Edward Sullivan, the Church of England (Anglican) Bishop of Algoma was carrying out missionary work in his vast diocese.

When Bishop Sullivan took office in 1882, Algoma was a vast wilderness. He described it as "a land of Christmas trees and rocks of ages" which as I reflect on my growing up years in Chapleau pretty adequately sums it up even in the 1940s.

Let me just note though that the good Bishop surely did not realize the vast wealth among the trees and rocks of his diocese. But I digress.

To do his missionary work he was faced with  a lack of funds so he went on what was called a "begging tour" of England speaking at fashionable churches all over the country to raise money. This was a common practice.

He advertised the needs of Algoma as an illustration of the missionary work among English settlers and others in Canada. If you had ancestors living in Chapleau circa 1885, like I did, even though the first of mine Patrick Mulligan and other family members were Roman Catholic, Bishop Sullivan was reaching out for them. 

The Bishop also recognized the need to minister to construction workers along the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. A special kind of person was needed and the Bishop found him in Rev. Gowan Gillmor who delighted in his nickname 'The Tramp'. 

On many occasions Rev. Gillmor walked the railway line from Sudbury to Chapleau and on to Missanabie. On one of his journeys he apparently walked the entire CPR line from North Bay to Port Arthur and return  - a distance of some 2000 mikes.

He described his work  long the CPR. He ministered to the construction people numbering about 5000 men holding services as he went along in camps, shanties and box cars and sleeping in them overnight. His experiences were the roughest. These people were from all parts of America and Europe. Typhoid fever was the scourge of railway construction. 

Archbishop R. J. Renison later said that Gillmor was the best railway missionary that ever lived. For years this missionary priest literally lived with the railway men or pushed a handcar from section house to section house, ate greem bacon from the same plate and often slept under the same blanket.

He brought food or clothing to the needy or nursed and prayed with the sick for thirty years

Rev. Gillmor also conducted the first church service for the early settlers of Chapleau in October 1884 and was instrumental in founding St John's Church a year later. 

Rev. John Sanders perhaps the first indigenous person ordained priest in the Church of England in Canada conducted the first Church of England service at Chapleau in 1882 on the banks of the river. Descendants of Rev. Sanders still live in the Chapleau area.

John Sanders

Rev. Sanders was responsible for building several churches.

In !982 when the late Rev. William Ivey was Rector of St. John's there was a re-enactment of this service with Rev. Canon Redfern Louttit playing the part of Rev. Sanders, Canon Louttit graduated from St John's Residential School and attended Wycliffe College. He was ordained in St. John's Church. 

In 1985 to mark the 100th anniversary of St John's, Rev E Roy Haddon, a former Rector returned to play Rev. Gowan Gillmor. Rev. Jerry Smith was the rector. Jerry is now Rector of Holy Comforter Episcopal Church in Tallahassee FL

The Roman Catholic Church also had "railway missionaries" and I am looking into them. If anyone has information on them please feel free to contact me. My email is mj.morris@live.ca