The main purpose of the Methodist/Presbyterian survey was to understand the religious lay of this newly settled land and to find opportunities for growing the flock. What their survey found was that it was a very crowded field.

Emily Murphy was the young wife of an Anglican minister newly situated in the Swan River Valley. She was the author of Janey Canuck in the West (1910). She wrote about her time in Swan River  (renamed Poplar Bluff in the book) and in it made a sly poke at the overabundance of clergy and religious students in the small town.

The clergy in Poplar Bluff are numerous enough to preach the Gospel to every creature. There are five, not counting the students from theological colleges who are here for the summer. The population is about three hundred. Still, this cannot be helped, for our mission boards must really make an endeavour to spend the money contributed by the very generous people “back East.

Why so many ministers? Was the west really that wild? Or was it more like the Americans trying to beat the Russians to the moon.

It seems there was a Grace Race going on.

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As settlers spread out across the West, hundreds of men doing God’s work followed. History lessons when I was young didn’t say much about missionaries on the prairies beyond cliches like — they came to work among the Indians — a euphemism used to avoid uncomfortable truths of assimilation through missions and residential schools. While a trail-blazing few pushed on ahead of settlement in the hopes of ‘civilizing’ and saving the souls of the indigenous people, the majority of clergymen came later to maintain civilization and concentrate on the souls of the homesteaders. Nearly three million people arrived in Canada between 1900 and 1914 (almost half of them moved through to the Prairies) so there were a lot of potential souls. Churches of all denominations had their eyes on the New West. Urgent appeals flooded back East and to England for help.
In 1907 an appeal arrived for the Archbishop of Canterbury from Saskatchewan. They desperately needed fifty laymen in the diocese. Twenty-one men were found suitable and sent out with the promise of more to come. Two bishops on a tour of investigation in 1909 found the Church of England still struggling to maintain their “moral and spiritual influence”.

In February the next year, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York made a public appeal for donations and for offers of overseas service to Canada. They also started The Archbishops’ Western Canadian Fund. Donations would be used to build and maintain central clergy-houses across the west and Mission volunteers would serve in isolated outposts in the surrounding areas. Two groups of men were dispatched in the spring. More clergy and laymen followed as quickly as they could be examined and prepared.
One young man to promptly answer the Archbishops’ call was Walter Thomas Henry Cripps.

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Janey Canuck was published in 1910,  the same year Walter T H Cripps landed in Canada and made his way to the Swan River Valley. Walter was a theological student and he’d come to take his place ministering in the West. He disembarked in Montreal in September, travelled to Manitoba and wintered in the Valley. He became friends with Harold and his family. He was to have a profound influence on Harold’s life.