Yukon who is who

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Charlotte Selina “Nina” Bompas (1830 – 1917)
	
Nina Cox was born in England to Charlotte Skey and Joseph Cox and had a brother and two sisters. She was young when the family moved to Italy for her father’s health. After the death of a prominent missionary bishop in Melanesia in 1871, she had an evangelical awakening and was called to missionary work. Her cousin, William Bompas was the recently consecrated Bishop of Athabasca when he proposed to her in 1874. Five days after the wedding they started a lengthy journey to Fort Simpson, NWT. Nina Bompas was in her forties and not accustomed to hardship, and her diary reports times of being lonely and desolate. However, she was dedicated and learned the Slavey Language and took an interest in the indigenous women.((Kerry M. Abel, “Charlotte Selina Cox.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: 
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cox_charlotte_selina_14E.html)) Reverend and Mrs. W. D. Reeve, had just opened the Indian residential school at Fort Rae. Miss Morris acted as secretary and companion to Mrs. Bompas at the Fort Simpson mission.((Barbara E. Kelcey, //Alone in Silence: European Women in the Canadian North before 1940.// Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2001: 99.)) Nina Bompas played the harmonium at church services, offered religious and reading lessons to children, organized children’s choirs, and became known for looking after orphans. The Bompas adopted two indigenous children, but they died as a baby and a toddler.((Kerry M. Abel, “Charlotte Selina Cox.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: 
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cox_charlotte_selina_14E.html)) After one infant died in 1877, she wrote that infant Jennie cheered her on long dreary nights.((H.A. Cody, //An Apostle of the North.// Introduction by William R. Morrison and Kenneth S. Coates. The University of Alberta Press, 2002: XLIII.)) Nina was a believer in homeopathic medicine and treated the sick in her husband’s diocese. She suffered from severe headaches and in 1876 contracted a more serious illness.((Kerry M. Abel, “Charlotte Selina Cox.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: 
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cox_charlotte_selina_14E.html)) 
	
Salina travelled to Winnipeg in the spring of 1877 and stayed for two years before returning to Fort Simpson. She returned to England in 1883 and spoke and did fund-raising for the mission. She briefly returned to the Mackenzie mission in 1886/87 but health and family took her back to England then to Montreal before rejoining her husband, now at the Selkirk diocese Buxton Mission at Forty Mile, in 1892.((Kerry M. Abel, “Charlotte Selina Cox.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: 
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cox_charlotte_selina_14E.html)) 

Selina had her own pictures and furniture from England at Forty Mile and she met Mrs. Canham there. She started a reading club for the miners. She returned to England in 1896 due to a sister's illness and returned to the north in 1897. She spent that winter at Fort Yukon, due to the low water, and taught school there with the Hawksleys. She returned to Forty Mile in 1897 to find that gold had been discovered on Bonanza Creek. When the Bompas left Forty Mile in 1900, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon were left in charge of the mission children and the miners’ church, and Mr. Hawksley had Buxton Mission.((//Five Pioneer Women in the Anglican Church in the Yukon.// Whitehorse: Women's Auxiliary of the Anglican Church, 1983: 8-19.))
	
In 1901, Bompas moved his headquarters to Caribou Crossing (Carcross), and in 1904, Selina went on a speaking tour of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec. She raised $800 in Toronto, enough to build a church in Carcross. William Bompas died in 1906, and Selina moved to Montreal to live with her two nieces. She continued to speak and inspire her friends and audiences. She was a well-known missionary in her own right with significant contributions in teaching and fund-raising.((Kerry M. Abel, “Charlotte Selina Cox.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: 
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cox_charlotte_selina_14E.html)) 

Mrs. Bompas resigned from her position as president of the Women’s Auxiliary in 1907. She had been the president since the organization of the local chapter. The Dawson Branch presented her with an ivory cross, carved by the Reverend C. Reed and mounted with gold nuggets as a broach. It was a souvenir of the frozen north and a memorial of affection and regard from the members of the Women’s Auxiliary.(("Gleaning from Selkirk's Report.” //The New Era,// Vol. V, No. 1, July 1907.))