The following is a paper I wrote in seminary in 2017 for professor Ray Aldred. A trigger warning that the colonial practices and language of 19th century Methodist missionaries are contained in this writing.
For my first paper for this course, I explored the practice of the potlatch, particularly as it was practiced in First Nations here on the west coast of Canada; including on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. More specifically, I researched the Kwakwaka’wakw practices of spirituality. For my second paper, I explored the revivalist impulse in Canadian Methodism, which I suggested was still very much alive in the Methodist denomination in mid-to-late 19th century Canada, including here within the West Coast Missions amongst and to First Nations. My own interest in this comes from own Pentecostal/revivalist heritage, and also spans from stumbling across a copy of the Rev. Thomas Crosby’s Up and Down The North Pacific Coast while visiting a shared United Church / Anglican rectory in Tofino. I was surprised to read about the revivals in my own town of Victoria which took place here in the mid-to-late 19th century. Elsewhere I have written about the surge of the charismatic movement in Victoria in the United and Anglican Churches in the 1970s and 80s, so exploring this topic made a lot of sense to me.
In this paper, I’d like to draw on what I learned in both papers to suggest that revivalist forms of Methodism led to an ‘organic’ engagement with First Nations who, as I hope to demonstrate, experienced a continuity of that Methodist expression with some of the ways their traditional religion was practiced, making for an easier transition into Christianity. This seems especially true with the Tsimshian, who Rev. Thomas and Emma Crosby were engaged for the longest time (they also engaged in missions to/with the Kwakwaka’wakw). The earliest stories of conversion had elements of mutual benefit for both the European missionaries and the some of the First Nations (that is, individuals and nations). Some of the literature suggests that the Tsimshian had great agency in this, and benefited around trade and education, especially in the earlier days. However, I would also suggest that most any social benefit was lost with the co-mixture of that revivalism with a Euro-centric cultural bias, which actively and aggressively ‘demonized’ most non-European cultural practices, including the potlatch, which itself became a cultural ‘flashpoint’ for the ire of the Methodists in particular – though was not limited to them, given negative writings from Anglicans and Roman Catholics. To examine this further, I’ll look at the legacy of the Methodists such as Rev. Thomas and Emma Crosby and the Rev. William Henry Pierce and, to a lesser extent, William Duncan, the low-church Anglican Missionary with the Church Mission Society, who was a contemporary, and, in some ways, competitor, with the Methodist Mission run by the Crosbys in Fort Simpson.
In this paper, I’ll suggest that any relatively mutual ‘gains’ in mission made by the missionaries were compromised by their European cultural biases, which, rather than encouraging a continuity of cultural forms, such as dress, language and even potlatching, made these and other elements of traditional ways to be diabolical counter-points to the Christianity they were seeking to ‘give’ to the First Nations. In the case of the Crosby’s, it shall become clear that their ‘brand’ of Methodism was not mere revivalism alone, but was inseparable from a program to civilize the ‘savages’ by bringing them ordered, Euro-Canadian values and practices. In order to keep this scope of this paper manageable, I’ll continue my focus on the potlatch – and explore the attitudes toward that practice from the missionaries in my analysis and research here. Parallel papers could, of course, be written on dance, marriage, drumming, language and other ‘suppressed’ First Nations customs – but those are, for the most part, beyond the scope of this paper, and each truly deserves their own exploration and analysis.
What makes the potlatch so intriguing is the degree to which it was vilified, and that the vilification was politicised in the missionaries active call for the newly formed Government of Canada to make the practice illegal. Before I delve into some of the depictions of the potlatch from the missionaries, I should note that the potlatch, as it is being described here, is described exclusively from a post-contact perspective, and most of the in-depth literature on the potlatch suggests that the potlatch changed in form and meaning dramatically after contact, as I suggested in my first paper. It is certainly possible that there were ‘degraded’ elements in the potlatch which Crosby and the others describe, but it is difficult to separate which of those existed before contact. I’m not making an essentialist notion that all was perfect prior to arrival – but even in Crosby’s writing, descriptions of native ceremony which describe them as drunken, orgiastic feasts are evidence that European contact, at least in form of access to alcohol had shifted the nature of the feasts. The more nuanced, albeit still negative writing on the potlatch, then, from the (‘mixed-blood’) indigenous Methodist (Tsimshian) missionary Rev. William Henry Pierce will provide an important counterpoint to the less nuanced writings of Crosby and the other Methodists of European descent and supports a view that prior to contact the potlatch was purer. I should also note early on that my initial paper focused on the potlatch of the Kwakiutl Nation, which are related, though distinct from the Tsimshian. Crosby had interactions with both nations, and his painting diverse (though related) First Nations practices with the same brush further complicates the analysis here, though does attest that the Methodist missionaries made little distinction between the practices as they differed from nation-to-nation, choosing instead to talk in generalities of practice in many of their writings.
But let’s first take a step back in order to draw somewhat of a line between the potlatch and the Methodist revival tent meeting. In his book Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian: Small Shoes for Feet Too Large, Clarence Bolt notes that: “One important reason for [the Tsimshian] choosing Methodism was its revivalistic style of worship – a style which reminded them of their own winter ceremonies and religious practices” (Bolt 40) . Hare and Barman echo this, noting that “Tsimshian found within Christianity a certain continuity with their own social and spiritual foundations. Neylan compares fundamental concepts of Tsimshian spirituality with evangelical Christian Doctrine” (Hare and Barman39). Herein lies one of the key ironies of what would emerge as the relationship between the Methodist missionaries and the Tsimshian converts developed; that the emotional and experiential revivalist elements of Methodist Christianity was a deep attraction because of the continuity with the spiritual experience of the Tsimshian, including the potlatch. It was, however, the European baggage which the Methodist Missionaries brought which resisted traditional practices and would allow for very few forms of inculturation of those traditional practices into the Methodist Missions which would compromise that very mission.
Bolt articulates this interrelation between Methodist revivalism and European culture as played out with the Thomas Crosby well:
…Thomas Crosby, combined the Western cultural values… with an anachronistic, revivalist brand of Methodism… His cultural heritage… included … notions of appropriate everyday behaviour, social relationships and social structures. From Methodism he learned to place emphasis on being ‘filled with the spirit’ and witnessing to save ‘lost souls’. By the time he arrived at Fort Simpson, he had integrated his secular and religious values into a unified package, and, for him, Christianity included the acceptance of both elements (Bolt 26)
My own suggestion, deriving from the end my last paper, is that Methodism was already beginning to bow to the liberal, European values and this mix of progressivism (in that paper, it was drawing on Victor Shepherd’s sense that, theologically speaking, Schleiermacher had already taken over the upper echelons of Canadian Methodism by the late 19th century). By progressivism, I’m drawing on the secular, liberal notion that, in order for ‘heathen’, ‘savage’, ‘primitive’ society to progress, it must bow to the values of western custom and culture; most notably around education, medicine, dress, religious ceremony, language and even village/town order (much could be written here on William Duncan and the village planning around Metlakahtla). The initial draw of the Tsimshian toward ‘primitive’ Methodist spirituality (and, arguably, overlapping impulses in low-Church Anglicanism vis-à-vis Duncan) is lost when that spirituality is packaged alongside the progressivist impulse, as Bolt suggests that it is. It’s interesting to me, then, that the text I referenced in my second paper, Phyllis Airhart’s Serving the Present Age: Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist makes the point that late 19th century Methodism was beginning to take place, though her analysis suggests more of a linear progression from revivalism to progressivism – and her definition of progressivism is more focused on the social gospel than the broader definition of progressivism that I am employing around the liberal notion of the need to evolve toward a more civilized society through education, medicine and the like. One online definition of progressivism summaries what I’m trying to encapsulate well:
Progressivism is a philosophy based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition. Progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from barbaric conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society.[1]
I would, actually suggest that Airhart’s definition, and Wikipedia’s are closer than one might initially imagine. One needn’t look further than, say, the Methodist social gospeller, the Rev. J.S. Woodworth’s[2] or Baptist social gospeller the Rev. Tommy Douglas’ early flirtations with eugenics[3] as evidence of the definitional overlay.
Returning, now, to focusing in on the potlatch, there is little ambiguity in Crosby’s progressivist position:
… Admiration for some elements of Native society did not lead to a general tolerance of basic Native practices. He [Crosby] wrote: “I cannot have anything to do with the old way, the dance, the potlatch, etc., it is all bad”. For Crosby, ‘everything of heathenism is of the devil.’ The potlatch was the worst vice of all. Its conspicuous consumption and distribution of goods and food was totally reprehensible to a frugal, hard working, Victorian Canadian. Native hospitality and generosity could not outweigh a basic ‘heathen’ orientation… Because Native society was so corrupt, it had to be replaced by something similar to Canadian society (Bolt 35)
A description of ‘the evil potlatch’ published in 1893 in the Toronto Empire describes a ‘disgusting’ scene where “Strewn about in all directions were pieces of refuse, food and other filth, in which the young children were rolling, some of them entirely nude… To make the mixture complete, were scores of Indian dogs lying about with the children…” (cited in Hou 9). Cornelius Bryant, Methodist Missionary in Nanaimo, BC wrote the government of Canada noting that “potlatching customs are demoralizing without any redeeming future” (Hou 4). Others, such as William Duncan went so far as to tie in murder and cannibalism with the potlatching where he describes ‘an old chief, in cold blood, ordered a slave to be dragged to the beach, murdered, and thrown into the water… each of the naked cannibals appeared with half of the body in their hands… the superstitions connected with this fearful system are deeply rooted here.” (Hou 3). Similarly, Crosby links the potlatch to “the desecration of the dead… tear the body to pieces like dogs” (Crosby in Among the An-Ko-Me-Nums 109-110)
The white missionaries were not politically passive in their understanding of the potlach, and, accordingly, many wrote to the Government of Canada to suppress the potlatch, leading to Bill 87 of 1884, where Sir John A. McDonald called the potlatch “…debauchery of the worst kind, and the departmental officers and all clergymen unite in affirming that it is absolutely necessary to put this practice down” (Hou 8). This Church-State nexus in the intermingling of Christian theology with European cultural values for the ‘progress’ and ‘betterment’ of First Nations was a foreshadow of the Residential School system, which would be formalized merely 8 years later, when the Government and churches would enter into formal partnership in the operation of the Indian residential schools.[4] It is likely no surprise that Emma Crosby’s home for girls in Fort Simpson became one of the first Canadian Government Funded Residential Schools, and evolved from a place of care to an increasingly intuitional place of confinement, until it was closed in 1948.
I’ve already alluded to the fact that the Rev. William Henry Pierce, of Tsimshian ancestry (and Scottish, by his father) had a slightly more nuanced take on the potlatch. Though he shared the opinion that “before the gospel was preached… the natives were ignorant, superstitious, degraded, wild and cruel” (Pierce 108). However, in description of the potlatch, Pierce says:
The real potlatch, conducted in the early days before the whites came, was very different from the modern feast. There were rules and regulations to govern every move and these were strictly adhered to… There were rules to guide the dances, the whole of the feast, and the young people. During the potlatch the wisest and best speakers were chosen to give lectures… These lectures taught them how to respect themselves and to honour those who were in authority as their chiefs. The young people were instructed to lead pure lives and shun all form of evil… When the potlatch broke up all returned to their homes feeling that they had received help and encouragement (Pierce 126)
Pierce then goes on to echo the tone and content of the other Methodist missionaries, in describing the then-modern potlatch as wholly negative and destructive. What is fascinating about Pierce’s take is that he resists and inverts the progressivism that is so prevalent in Crosby and the others, instead noting that the potlatch itself isn’t evil, but was made so by the white settlers. In that same book, Pierce’s editor inserts several anecdotes about Pierce at gatherings of the recently formed United Church of Canada (the book was published in 1933) and Pierce is noted to have resisted a motion to support Ryerson College in Toronto as a tax from each congregation, by suggesting it is similar to the potlatch, insomuch as it is a law that is non-enforceable. At that gathering, the editor notes Pierce as saying: “The Ottawa Government passed a law against the Potlatch years ago, and the Indians are potlatching still” (Pierce 100).
Pierce certainly offers a more nuanced voice than Crosby, his ‘superior’ and agent of his conversion – though it is important to flag that Pierce is over a quarter-a-century later than Crosby, and there is perhaps some hindsight in what was to happen at Fort Simpson. Pierce did, however, adopt much of the European progressivism which characterized many of the attitudes of the other missionaries, in spite of some sense in his writing about the potlatch of there being good in pre-contact First Nation culture. This progressivism is apparent in his writing, which, after hearing a United Church speaker speak about the need for a burning heart, Pierce said:
In days of old… we were entirely dependent on favourable winds and tides. If the winds were contrary we camped for one day, two days, three days or more, as the case might be until a favourable wind arose, when we hoisted our square sheet in our canoe and set off on our journey. But now… it is different. We now have boats with fire in them, and all that is necessary is to start our engine… So it is with the United Church, the great need of the day is a membership with ‘Burning Hearts,’ hearts so full of love and loyalty and enthusiasm that no matter how adverse the storms and tempests and tides of life may be, we can, in the name of God, march forward and attempt great things for Him. (Pierce 102)
Though the analogy may be innocuous, it demonstrates just how hard the ‘old’ Methodists like Pierce wrestled with how to synthesize the ‘warmed heart’ of Wesley with the need to change the world of the social gospel that was becoming the operative theology of the United Church of Canada. By choosing the motor boat over the canoe was one way to metaphorize the call to burning hearts, Pierce lays his ‘progress’ cards on the table.
It may be difficult to untangle how the progressivist impulse effected the First Nations culture, and whether ‘destructive’ elements in the potlatch, whether they were exaggerated or existed at all in the ‘debauched’ way the missionaries perceived them existed before European contact or were a result of it. In this sense, the historiography would perhaps need to posit various oral traditions against each other. If, however, Pierce is correct in believing that the pre-contact potlatch was far more wholesome, one would have to ask what was it about the Methodists that they simply did not seek to use the potlatch as a tool for building ‘civilized’ and ‘ordered’ Christians, given the Pierce suggests that was their function pre-contact. I would suggest that thought the resistance to the potlatch may have been cloaked in Christian language (i.e. ‘demonic’), much of the resistance seems to be cultural; insomuch as the traditions of sharing, and, if viewed positively, a way to do war without violence and return goods to the original owner not unlike the Jubilee practices of the Hebrew Bible. To return to either a barter-based societies, or, even worse, to embrace sharing implied by of atheist Marxism (notably the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848) would be a step backwards or against true Christian ways in the eyes of the missionaries. Their inability to overcome the economic biases of Victorian England, instead of looking to the prophetic tradition of the Jubilee in order to embrace the potlatch was detrimental to their Christian witness. Interestingly, The Canadian Council of Churches went so far, in 2013 to draw on the work of Menno Wiebe and the Aboriginal Rights Coalition to suggest:
Aboriginal societies also celebrated rituals that remind us of elements of the biblical Jubilee. Perhaps the best known was the potlatch celebrated by the Kwakiutl, Nootka, Salish, Haida, Nisga’a, Gitksan and other peoples of the north-west. This ritual was celebrated at important times to redistribute wealth and exemplify social and economic solidarity. In what is today central Canada, Algonquin societies celebrated a feast to which people traveled from great distances. Fur, corn, maple syrup and (later) kettles and tools were given and received. Even dead ancestors were made part of the renewed sharing of life; their bones were unearthed from burial mounds and re-arranged, symbolizing the necessary re-arrangement of status among the living as the celebrating communities responded to their nation’s ideal of justice and equality. [5]
One can only imagine how differently things might have played out had Crosby, Pierce, Duncan and the other missionaries from the various denominations had made the connection between the Biblical Jubilee and the practice of the potlatch and, rather than resist it due to European notions of property and ownership – and instead embrace it as an indigenous way to form and support (Methodist) Christians. Ironically, the emphasis on formation, discipline, order and respecting elders that Pierce notes were a function of the pre-contact potlatch, are in-line with the Methodist notions of Christian discipleship. What if the potlatch had been overlaid or reverse-acculturated with the idea of the Methodist annual conference; as a joyful gathering of the indigenous faithful? Still, this creative possibility was never explores, and the opportunities to holistically integrate Methodist / Christian practice with First Nations culture were lost, if not forever, than at least for a time.
In my first paper, as an example of the revivalist impulse, I shared the story of the conversion of the ‘chieftain’ Elizabeth Diex (or Diix) at a revival meeting in Victoria (Pierce’s conversion, by the way, also happened in Victoria in a similar fashion). Diex was called “the mother of Methodism among the Tsimpshean Tribes” (Neylan 113) by Rev. C.F. Tate, another Methodist Missionary – and though the Euro-Missionary and oral traditions of the Tsimshian people differ, it is generally agreed that her son, the hereditary chief of the Tsimshian, and his wife – Alfred and Kate Dudoward were central figures to the Methodist Mission effort at Fort Simpson under Thomas Crosby’s leadership. It was their mother who petitioned to set up the mission, even though she stayed in Victoria. However, the Dudoward’s relationship with the Crosby’s serves as an important case study around the failure of the Methodist mission; especially as it relates to Crosby’s inability to accept the potlatch and other elements of Tsimshian culture.
Though devout Methodists, the Dudoward’s lacked Thomas and Emma Crosby’s disdain for their culture. The Dudoward’s home, ‘Eagle House’ “remained spatially consistent with Tsimshian culture, including with regard to class-based and rank-based social living arrangements” (Hare and Barman 236). In describing a wedding of one of the Dudoward’s children, Hare and Barman write:
This was no austere Methodist happening, but, rather, a community celebration… echoes, perhaps an imaginative reinterpretation of the potlatch were present just as they were at the Christmas feasts that Kate Hendry had described a decade or so earlier [more on that in a moment]… It was not just the Tsimshian and mixed-race people who were, so far as possible, finding their own middle ways. By their actions, the Methodist and other newcomers gave the lie to the promise that conversion would lead to some kind of rough equity between themselves and Aboriginal people. The social life that comforted Emma served to set her and the other newcomer women apart within their own enclave. More and more… separation became institutionalized. From the summer of 1891… Thomas Crosby held a separate Sunday afternoon ‘service for white people…’ (Hare and Barman 238).
In this quote, we see that the promise of progressivism was not bearing fruit. Over time, Crosby “put Alfred ‘on trial’ as a church member, along with a goodly number of other Tsimshian, and in 1880 put him ‘back on trial’… Kate was not listed as a class leader; that is, as a person considered capable of leading one of the small groups that met regularly for prayer…” (Hare and Barman 235). This pattern goes back-and-forth in the years that followed – with the Dudowards being put on trial and stripped and reinstated in their leadership several times over. In 1893 they threatened to leave the Methodists. Eventually they did so, and jointed the Salvation Army, who had set up shop at Fort Simpson as an alternative to the Methodist mission. It’s important for our purposes to see that the rejection of Tsimshian culture led to a splintering of the mission. I don’t want to suggest that the Crosby’s didn’t accept any element of native culture. There are, after all, pictures of Thomas wearing traditional garb, and the Methodist Church was noted to include clan decoration in its church building. However, most of the traditional practices, including wearing traditional clothing at weddings, were frowned upon.
It’s interesting that, in spite of ecclesial and governmental suppression, the potlatch did not die out. The wedding store that I noted above shows that, thou you can take the people from the practice, but you can’t take the practice from the people (this is my bad attempt to paraphrase you can take the person from the Church, but you can’t take the Church from the person). Indeed, even within the culture that demonized it, echoes of potlatch and other elements of traditional culture emerged even in ‘polite’ society, right under the noses of the missionaries, and sometimes to their dismay. One of the Crosby’s white co-missionaries (notably the first recognized female missionary in the Methodist Church), Kate Hendry:
…did not understand the layered meaning of the events, so did not grasp the echoes of the potlatch in the gift-giving; rather she took pleasure that ‘we could eat and drink together and feel that we are brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus an idea that pleased them very much’ Then ‘as I was about to leave they present me with a basket of goodies and dressed me with it on my back as they carry them there formed a procession and cheering as I was leaving them they gave 3 as hearty cheers as you ever heard.’” She did not realize the significance in report how ‘from the feasts I had 53 tea biscuts’ (Hare and Barman 198-199).
Neylan points out that “Christians frequently engaged the potlatch… Just as with other cultural forms deemed central to Tsimshian survival, Natives adapted Christian structures to serve their needs. For example, some patterns of reciprocity, gift-distribution and communal labour were channeled into Christian activities… Just as contact with Europeans had altered cultural forms, the boundaries between Christian practices and ‘traditionalists’ were not impermeable, they were elastic” (Neylan 249). It strikes me that there was something in the Euro-tribal posture of those missionaries that either alienated their followers or which caused them to practice their traditions either below the radar or in ways which would not be overt enough to be defined as ‘traditional’. In this sense, the Crosby progressivist policy of opposing and vilifying the potlatch was a profound failure of missiology.
I write this looking back almost 150 years since Thomas Crosby led revival meetings about a 15 minute walk down the street, in what is now Chinatown. Even closer is the Methodist Church that he was ordained in, which is now the conservatory of music, which sits beside Our Place, the United Church supported street outreach. I imagine that if Thomas Crosby were to see the safe injection sites, women and men, First Nation and European alike injecting needles into their veins his description wouldn’t differ much from what he wrote about the potlatch over 100 years ago.
I write this paper not because I wish to reminisce about the past, but because I wonder if there are elements in this story which, should a new / re-newed relationship between First Nation and settlers (and particularly Christian settlers, the tiny minority that we now are) emerge, we could draw upon. As a follower of Jesus, who experiences great joy in this path of following the Triune Creator, I grieve the cultural posture of those Methodist missionaries, which I would go so far as to call racist and even (culturally) genocidal. And yet, I cannot deny that we worship the same God in Christ Jesus – and that I met Jesus in a similar way as did Pierce or Deex – and there might be a jewel in that revivalist tradition that is worth digging up as we seek to renew our own traditions. However, to renew revivalism, we should be sure to be evermore aware of our dressing our passionate faith in the clothing of our own culture and in our own idolatrous penchant for progress made in our own image, which is nothing short of a denial of the catholicity of the Gospel.
How is it, then, that ‘mission’ can be done in a way which doesn’t overlay culture with the Gospel at the expense of another culture? As we’ve looked at the history of the potlatch in relation to the Methodist Missionaries, one has to wonder if there aren’t better ways of doing (mutual?) inculturation in mission when there is such a profound imbalance of power?
Whatever the answer to that is, it’s clear that there was something in the experience of meeting Jesus that drew people toward Christ within the revivalist Methodist frame. Could there one day be a great revival that comes to us settlers from indigenous missionaries and prophets who call us to bring our acquired possessions and gather at the potlatch together and re-establish our social relations with each other through a cruciform surrender?
I don’t know how likely or possible that vision is, but my prayer is that it might be so.
Works Cited or Referenced
Airhart, Phyllis D. Serving This Present Age: Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist Tradition in Canada. McGill-Queens Press: Montreal, 1992
Bolt, Clarence. Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian: Small Shoes for Feet Too Large. UBC Press: Vancouver, 1992
The Canadian Council of Churches. “Aboriginal Land Rights” https://www.councilofchurches.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Aboriginal-Land-Rights.pdf
Crosby, Thomas Among the An-ko-me-nums or Flathead Tribes of Indians of the Pacific Coast. William Briggs: Toronto, 1907
Crosby, Thomas. Up and Down the North Pacific Coast by Canoe and Mission Ship. Missionary Society of the Methodist Church – Young Peoples Forward Movement Dept: Toronto, 1914
Hare, Jan and Barman, Jean. Good Intentions Gone Awry: Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast. UBC Press: Vancouver, 2006
Hou, Charles. To Potlatch or Not to Potlatch: An In-Depth Study of Cultural Conflict Between the B.C. Coastal Indian and the White Man. The BC Teachers Federation : Vancouver, BC. 1973
Neylan, Susan. The Heavens Are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity. McGill-Queens University Press: Kingston and Montreal, 2003
Pierce, William Henry. From Potlatch to Pulpit Edited by J.P. Hicks. Vancouver Bindery Limited: Vancouver, 1933
Tanner, Michael Allan. The Wretched Giving Away System Which is the Root of All Iniquity”: The Church Missionary Society and the Kwakiutl Potlatches 1878-1912. MA Thesis UVic: Victoria, 1988
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
[2] See http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/connections/53246e82132156674b00025f
[3] See http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/tommy-douglas
[4] See timeline here: http://www.ahf.ca/downloads/condensed-timline.pdf
[5] https://www.councilofchurches.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Aboriginal-Land-Rights.pdf