Much like the Protestant denominations in the United States, members of the United Church of Canada and the Methodist churches set up missions across Canada during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to aid and educate the Aboriginal peoples they encountered during the country's colonization. Many of the records from those missions have ended up in the UCC archives at their headquarters in Toronto. Just as the Congregational Library is striving to make our missionary materials available online to researchers everywhere, the United Church of Canada has set up repositories for their digitized records.
Up and Down the Coast contains hundreds of photographs, documents, and even videos dating from approximately 1850 to 1975 that chronicle the schools, medical and marine missions, and other "Indian work" in British Columbia. While these materials may not offer the most flattering look at the missionaries themselves from a modern perspective, they are important records of Canada's national history and the recent history of the First Nations.
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