College of Emmanuel and St Chad - Rotunda Yearbook (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada)

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MACKAY AND LLOYD RUTH MATHESON BUCK ZTAn address (abridged) delivered at St. George ' s Church, Battleford, to mark the Centennial year of Confederation 7 History is not something remote from today ' s happenings. It was the day to day living of people who were like ourselves. It is our own living, the events all around us, affected by what is past, taking their shape in its light, casting its shadow and ours into the future. No man lives unto himself. For that reason, I shall speak of people, of two men in particular. Arch¬ deacon Mackay and Bishop Lloyd; whose work and will in the past have shaped the course for us today. I speak, I suppose, as a relic of that past myself; or if not a relic, at least a representative of a family associ¬ ated with the work of the Church in the West for more than one hundred years. I must have known Archdeacon Mackay from my earliest childhood in the Mission on the Onion Lake Indian Reserve; but it is with St. George ' s that I associate him - and rightly so. I had come to spend the Christmas holidays with my uncle and aunt. Canon and Mrs. Matheson - the most exciting event in all my childhood to that time. Journeys into space may enthrall a child today. To me, it was wonder enough that I had actually seen a train, and that I had travelled on it all theway to Battleford. Even this church of St. George ' s was mar¬ velous to my eyes, and Archdeacon Mackay was the preacher that Sunday. It would be quite incredible if I said that I remembered his sermon. I expect that my whole atten¬ tion was given to the organ and the choir, to a congregation made up of white people, to those marvelous electric lights and how they shoneupon the Archdeacon ' s long white beard. But that Sunday was also New Year ' s Day, and the Archdeacon would have re¬ called that on New Year ' s Day of 1877 he and Bishop McLean had conducted the first service of worship in the Battleford area. That was in a log building erected a few weeks beforeas the station for the Dominion Telegraph, giving the name TelegraphF lat ' to the site below the hi 11 where Government House was being built. Workmen from that building made up the congregation. And with Battleford established as the seat of government for the North-west Territories, a village began to grow on the Flats, the North-west Mounted Police erected their barracks on the high land between the rivers, and P.G. Laurie came in 1878 to set up the printing office for the West ' s first newspaper, The Saskatchewan Herald 11 . In September of 1877, the Rev. J .A. Mackay returned to Battleford to establish a mission here. There wasno house for him, nor any church. He and his family lived in tents on the Battle River until he cut logs and built their home. They moved into it on November 15, and winter set in the next day. The log church that he erected near Government House was named St. John ' s. It is long since gone, but it seems right that theCathedral of this Diocese should bear the same name. John Alexander Mackay was born at Moose Factory on James Bay in 1838, when the work of our Church in the West was only beginning to extend beyond its first Mission in theRed River Settlement. He was theson and grandson of Hudson ' s Bay Company of¬ ficers, and someof the granite hardness that was essential if men were to survive in the conditions of that day - if they were to fur¬ ther the work of the great Company into whose service they had entered - some of that granite was also i n the character of Mackay when he entered the highest and noblest service open to men. Trained first at Moose Factory under the Rev. John Horden, who was later the Bishop of Moos- onee, Mackay travelled toRed River to enter St. John ' s College, and was ordained in 1863 by Bishop Anderson, the first Bishop of Rupert ' s Land. In 1865, he was sent to Stanley Mission, for our early missions all

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followed the courseof thefur traders. When the Diocese of Saskatchewan was established in 1874 he was the only fully ordained clergyman in that whole vast area which stretched from the border of Manitoba to the Rocky Mountains, and (in the words of its first Bishop, the Right Reverend John McLean) from the international border north to Aurora Borealis and world without end . From 1877 to 1879, Mackay worked in the Battleford area, particularly of course on the Indian Reserves which had been es¬ tablished by the Treaty of 1876. Then in 1879, Emmanuel College was opened in Prince Albert, and he was called toassist in the training of other workers for the Diocese, for he was a very able man, and was to be¬ come renowned as a Cree scholar, trans- latingmuchof theBibleand the Prayer Book, and compiling a dictionary. In 1882 he was appointed Archdeacon, and fulfilled those duties for more than forty years. He was not a big man, but he was trained in all thedisciplineof thenorth, an expert woodsman, a crack shot, skilled in travel by canoe or dog-sled or snowshoes. Moreover, he was a man accustomed almost from birth to command, and he won the re¬ spect and confidence of Indian and white man alike. This was evident after the Rebellion of 1885 when the Dominion Government requested that he act as Indian Agentat Battleford until the Indian troubles were settled. He served in this capacity for two years. The salary paid to him was considerably larger than his usual stipend, and it was in keeping with the dedication of his life that he used all this extra money to build the church at Red Pheasant. After the Rebellion, the town of Battleford began to takeshape on its present site, the former buildings having been largely destroyed. The parish of St. George ' s was organized, and the work that had been carried on from the little log church of St. John ' s was merged into the new parish. Thefirst incumbent, the Rev. J.F. Pritchard, directed the building of St. George ' s Church and Bishop McLean dedicated it in July 1886. In 1888, the Rev. Edward Matheson came to St. George ' s. He and J.F. Pritchard were cousins, and had been stud¬ ents together at Emmanuel College, its first graduates. During his four years as incum¬ bent, Matheson ' s charge included Bresaylor and Saskatoon, where settlement had begun in 1882. In 1890, when the railroad from Regina reached Saskatoon, there were only three churches in all this western part of the Diocese, which was taking shape as the Deanery of Battleford. They were here at Battleford, and at Red Pheasant ' s and Onion Lake. Edward Matheson, appointed Rural Dean in 1891, resumed that office when he returned from Prince Albert in 1895 to serve as principal of the Indian Industrial School in the former Government Buildings across the Battle River. He continued as Rural Dean for almost forty years; and the con¬ tinuity and support which he gave to St. George ' s through a long succession of in¬ cumbents and rectors, were to make Canon and Mrs. Matheson most dearly loved in this parish and town. In their residence at the School and later in the town. Archdeacon Mackay found during more than twenty years the warmth and friendshipof a home, returning to it with thankfulness from his almost constant travel¬ ling. He supervised the building of board¬ ing schools at Lac La Ronge and at The Pas in the years before the First World War; and then in 1922, when he was convinced of the need for day schools on the Reserves, he persuaded the Government in Ottawa to re¬ open the day school at Little Pine though the agreement was that he should supervise and finance it personally until its success was assured. That school was to establish a proud record in Indian education, serving as a model for all the day schools that have followed it. It was the Arch deacon ' s last achieve¬ ment and hewasthen in his eighty-fifth year. His life was marked by complete dedication to the work amongst the Indians, for he re¬ garded this as the primary and great respon¬ sibility of our Church in the West. He had begun his work under Bishop Anderson and Bishop Machray of Rupert ' s