Good Intentions Gone Awry

Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast

By Jan Hare & Jean Barman
Categories: Gender & Sexuality Studies, Women’s Studies, Religious Studies, History, Canadian History, Indigenous Studies
Publisher: UBC Press
Hardcover : 9780774812702, 344 pages, July 2006
Paperback : 9780774812719, 344 pages, November 2006
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780774840699, 344 pages, November 2011
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774855174, 344 pages, November 2006
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Table of contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Crosby Family Chronology

Simpson's Early Women Teachers and Missionaries

Introduction

1 Courtship and Marriage

2 Arrival at Fort Simpson

3 Motherhood

4 Emma Alone

5 A Comfortable Routine

6 Adversity

7 Changing Times

8 Good Intentions Gone Awry

9 Repatriation

Afterword by Caroline Dudoward

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Description

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. They speak to her “good intentions” and to the factors that caused them to “go awry.” The authors critically represent Emma’s sincere convictions towards mission work and the running of the Crosby Girls’ 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 male missionary persevering on his own against tremendous odds.

Awards

  • Commended, Book Writing Competition on BC History, British Columbia Historical Federation 2006
  • Short-listed, Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Book Prize, BC Book Prizes 2006