Canadian Methodist Women, 1766-1925: Marys, Marthas, Mothers in Israel

CHAPTER 9

IN 1919, Nellie McClung accepted the invitation of the sub-executive of the Methodist Woman’s Missionary Society to give a series of addresses on its behalf.1 Her work appears to have been confined to Alberta, her home at that time, where she was already familiar as a speaker at annual meetings of the WMS branch.2 The national group, however, benefited from her authorship of “An Insistent Call,” which it published as the society’s annual Easter address for 1920. In it, McClung described the common perception of a woman’s missionary society: To the unthinking, a missionary meeting conjures up a gathering in the afternoon of elderly and unattached females, sprinkled with mothers of neglected children, who have deserted their lawful task of scrubbing floors and darning, to sit and sew for hypothetical orphans, while their own children go ragged and unkempt. While the ladies work, some one reads harrowing tales of early marriages, child widows and foot-binding, and the awful practices of the native tribes of BorrioboolaGha , and under the spell of this, the members decide to hold a bazaar to support a Bible-woman there. Then tea is served, and soon after, the meeting closes by singing “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” and the mothers of families go homeward and endeavor to gather up what is left of their scattered families. But a change has come over the attitude of the world toward missionary work. McClung went on to describe how the missionary work of women was now “extend[ing] Christianity and its humanities” as women found new ways to “interpret the love of God.”3 At the close of the nineteenth century, and during the twentieth century until the time of church union, members of the Woman’s MisNotes to chapter 9 start on page 272 181 “The Foreigners in Our Cities”: Women and Social Christianity CHAPTER 9 sionary Society continued to support and administer foreign missions. Yet, at the same time, they showed increasing interest in the reform of Canadian social conditions, especially in work with immigrants to Canada. Furthermore, many ladies’ aids broadened their horizons beyond their congregations to give increasing attention to the agenda of social Christianity. As more and more non-British immigrants arrived on Canadian shores, the nation underwent change. Asian immigrants had entered Canada to work on railway construction, and many of these had remained once their initial work was finished. Work among Asian immigrants was conducted by the General Board of Missions as well as by the WMS. The missionaries did not expect these immigrants to assimilate, to be “Canadianized ,” although the WMS workers at the Chinese Rescue Home in Victoria were pleased to see some become beacon lights in Chinatown as exemplars of Victorian domesticity.4 Canadians held a different attitude toward the non-English-speaking immigrants of European background who came both to the cities and to the rural areas of Canada. In 1909, James S. Woodsworth, superintendent of All People’s Mission in Winnipeg, published a book titled Strangers Within Our Gates. Woodsworth’s view of the intractability of racial traits was not shared by some of the more progressive Methodist clergy,5 but concern about the assimilability of immigrants was widespread . It had naive popular expression in a missionary pageant given by members of a mission circle in London, Ontario, in 1925. “The entertainment opened with the appearance of Miss Canada, appalled at the fast-increasing foreign population.” The churches called their workers to the aid of Canada “to meet this great challenge.”6 Methodist women shared the nativist sentiments that led to the desire for the assimilation of strangers to Canadian society. As Canadians , they might feel that “on the grounds of Patriotism, and of our responsibility in empire-building, as well as those of expediency, the work in our own country should be given pre-eminence.”7 The WMS women did not, however, focus their home mission work on assimilation; their activities had a strong religious dimension. In harmony with the thinking of other Canadian evangelicals of the day, the women’s goal was “to Christianize as well as Canadianize our new neighbors in and about our City.”8 Thus, for example, the WMS women at Lethbridge requested a worker to Christianize and Canadianize their new neighbours. In asking for a worker, they took it upon themselves to provide financial sup182 RESPONDING TO CHANGE port for a home...