William Carpenter Bompas (1834 – 1906) 

William Bompas was born in London, England. He was educated privately and joined his brother’s law firm when he was sixteen.((Kerry Abel, “William Carpenter Bompas.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bompas_william_carpenter_13E.html;  H.A. Cody, //An Apostle of the North.// Introduction by William R. Morrison and Kenneth S. Coates. The University of Alberta Press, 2002: XLII, LIII.)) He gave up his scholastic career to help support his family.((Colin Beairsto, "Making Camp: Rampart House on the Porcupine River." Prepared for the Heritage Branch, March 1997: 50-51.)) In 1858 he left legal work and in 1859 was ordained a deacon in the Church of England.((Kerry Abel, “William Carpenter Bompas.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bompas_william_carpenter_13E.html;  H.A. Cody, //An Apostle of the North.// Introduction by William R. Morrison and Kenneth S. Coates. The University of Alberta Press, 2002: XLII, LIII.))\\

Anglican missionary Rev. Robert McDonald became sick in 1864 and in 1865, Bompas heard a plea from David Anderson, former bishop of Rupert’s Land, asking for a volunteer to replace the missionary working between Fort McPherson and Fort Yukon, Alaska. Bompas was accepted by the Church Missionary Society (CMS), he was ordained as a priest, and five days later he set off for his new post. Not waiting for the Hudson’s Bay Company brigade, he traveled by means he arranged with Metis guides. He arrived unannounced at Fort Simpson on Christmas day 1865. William West Kirkby was the CMS missionary at the post and Bompas learned that Robert McDonald had recovered from his illness.((Kerry Abel, “William Carpenter Bompas.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bompas_william_carpenter_13E.html;  H.A. Cody, //An Apostle of the North.// Introduction by William R. Morrison and Kenneth S. Coates. The University of Alberta Press, 2002: XLII, LIII.)) \\

Bompas wrote to the Church Missionary Society, refusing to become an assistant priest under Robert McDonald, even though he was his superior in missionary ability, because McDonald was a native of Canada, so therefore inferior in some way. Through his missionary service, Bompas refused to accept that any Indigenous conversions were genuine or equal to that of British missionaries in the church, and he [seldom] never ordained any Indigenous or people of mixed heritage to the priesthood.((Cheryl Gaver, “Solitudes in Shared Spaces: Aboriginal and EuroCanadian Anglicans in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories in the Post-Residential School Era.” Thesis submitted for a Ph.D. in Religious Studies to the Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa, 2011: 77, 82, 89.)) This was despite the Church Missionary Society’s policy of creating a “Native Church” which Bompas first doubted and later opposed. His early missionary years were not marked by a large number of conversions.((H.A. Cody, //An Apostle of the North.// Introduction by William R. Morrison and Kenneth S. Coates. The University of Alberta Press, 2002: LII.)) \\

Bompas became a travelling missionary in the Mackenzie district. His extensive travels in 1865 were often used as examples of exemplary missionary work. In 1868, Bompas crossed the Richardson Mountains and visited Fort Yukon. He used the community as a base for travels on the Yukon and Porcupine rivers, and then travelled to the Arctic Coast to preach to the Inuvialuit.  He travelled again to the Arctic Coast in 1872, going overland from the Porcupine River.((H.A. Cody, //An Apostle of the North.// Introduction by William R. Morrison and Kenneth S. Coates. The University of Alberta Press, 2002: LIV-LV.))\\

The diocese of Athabasca was created in 1873, and Bompas was consecrated in May 1874 as the jurisdiction’s first bishop. He and his cousin, Charlotte Selina Cox, were married in London and Bishop Bompas returned to Fort Simpson with his wife and helpmate.((Kerry Abel, “William Carpenter Bompas.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bompas_william_carpenter_13E.html)))

After visiting William Duncan’s model community at Metlakatla, Bompas established model farms at Fort Dunvegan and Fort Vermilion in the Peace River district. The Irene Training School at Fort Vermilion was the first Anglican industrial school in the north (1880). Bompas continued to travel in the high north but found his position demanding, and on his recommendation the diocese was divided. In 1884 Bompas became the bishop of the northern diocese of Mackenzie River. This diocese was divided again in 1891 and Bompas became the bishop of Selkirk with headquarters at Forty Mile on the Yukon River.((Kerry Abel, “William Carpenter Bompas.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bompas_william_carpenter_13E.html))\\
In 1886, Mrs. Bompas arrived back from England with some new recruits: Miss French, to marry the Rev. T.H. Canham, Mr. and Mrs. Garton, and Mr. J. W. Ellington. In 1891 the Mackenzie River Diocese was divided, and the Diocese of Selkirk (Selig Kirke, or Holy Church) came into being. Bompas took over this area which became the Diocese of the Yukon. Bompas wintered at Rampart House in 1892. Forty Mile was considered the See City of the Diocese and Bompas and Mrs. Bompas and Mr. T. Totty were stationed there. Bompas thought the miners were a bad influence on the First Nation people and, due to Bompas's appeals in 1894, Inspector Constantine and Staff Sgt. Brown visited Forty Mile. In 1895, Mr. R. J. Bowen arrived from England to assist Bompas. In 1898 Bompas was at Dawson while Bowen was away getting married and found it very difficult ministering to settlers after his years with the First Nations. Mrs. Bompas was not there to help, being stranded in Fort Yukon by an early freeze-up.((Yukon Archives, Victoria Faulkner, 83/50 MSS 137 f.17.))\\

After the gold rush began, Bompas moved the Sea from Forty Mile to Moosehide. He tried to get the government to compensate the First Nations for the land they had to move from around Dawson. Inspector Constantine opposed the idea. Bompas’ letter included a suggestion that government grants to Anglican church schools would be appreciated. Bompas increasingly saw his role as a defender of his charges and his appeals were based in paternalism and self-righteousness.((H.A. Cody, //An Apostle of the North.// Introduction by William R. Morrison and Kenneth S. Coates. The University of Alberta Press, 2002: XXII-LXIII, LXV, LXX.)) Bompas thought that removing children from their parents would make them useful members of society and instruments of civilization. He established boarding schools at Forty Mile and Carcross. The latter formed the basis for the Carcross Residential School opened by the Anglican Church in 1911. It is considered by many in Dawson as the root of serious social problems.((Craig Mishler and William E. Simone, //Han People of the River.// University of Alaska Press, 2004: 11))\\ 

Bompas’ reports to the CMS and two of his books became known widely in Anglican church circles, and he himself became something of a saintly hero for several generations in both England and Canada. Dedicated to his work almost to the point of obsession, he reported his recreations to the 1903 //Who’s who// (London) as “Syriac studies or school keeping.” He left the north only once after his consecration, when he attended a meeting in Winnipeg of the provincial house of bishops in 1904. A large mission rally was held in his honour. Many non-Anglicans found Bompas a difficult and eccentric man. A puzzled Father Émile-Jean-Baptiste-Marie Grouard called him a “mystery.” “If he is quite sincere,” recorded the Oblate priest, “he is almost a saint. If not, he is truly a devil.” Northern First Nation people did not respond enthusiastically to Bompas either. The Anglican mission never succeeded in attracting many converts, except among the Gwich’in where Archdeacon Robert McDonald worked. While the reasons for this rejection are varied and complex, Bompas’s lack of respect for indigenous culture and his rigid expectations of potential converts were doubtless among the problems. The CMS’s policy of enlisting First Nation people as clerics as quickly as possible to help in evangelization was unacceptable to him. He maintained that “the want of intelligence & civilization” among them was “such that the improvement must come from without.” As a result, no native clergy were recruited or ordained during his tenure as bishop. Bompas himself recognized that his mission had “but indifferent success.” He laid the blame on the First Nations, whom he saw as “careless and weak in character,” and on the Roman Catholic missions in his diocese. “The District is a hot bed of Popery,” he lamented. “There is no government authority to hold them in check.”((Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online: http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=40693)) This despite the accomplishments of Archdeacon McDonald who is rightly credited with the spread of Anglican Christianity among the Gwich’in.\\ 

At the end of his career Bompas became more flexible in allowing the continuation of traditional practices alongside Christianity. Both belief systems included the effort to understand spirituality. They both spoke of stewardship, sharing, and interdependence.((H.A. Cody, //An Apostle of the North.// Introduction by William R. Morrison and Kenneth S. Coates. The University of Alberta Press, 2002: LXXIV, LXXV.))\\

Bishop and Mrs. Bompas moved to Carcross in 1901 and he transferred his students to a foster home and school there.((Kenneth Coates, “’Betwixt and Between’: The Anglican Church and the Children of the Carcross (Chooutla) Residential School, 1911-1954.” //BC Studies,// No. 64, Winter 1984-85: 29-30.)) He resigned as Bishop of Selkirk in 1905.((New York, 1896; copy in ACC, General Synod Arch., Toronto); Kerry Abel, “William Carpenter Bompas.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bompas_william_carpenter_13E.html)) In 1906, he was preparing to do some mission work at Forty Mile. He was writing a sermon in Carcross on 9 June 1906 when he died. William Bompas is buried in Carcross.((W.R. Hamilton, //The Yukon Story.// Vancouver, Mitchell Press Ltd., 1964: 149.))\\

Bompas was greatly respected by the church and his peers, if not universally liked. His publications include //Diocese of Mackenzie River //(London, 1888), //Northern lights on the Bible: drawn from a bishop’s experiences during twenty-five years in the great northwest// (London, [1893]), and //The symmetry of Scripture// (New York, 1896; copy in ACC, General Synod Arch., Toronto; Kerry Abel, “William Carpenter Bompas.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bompas_william_carpenter_13E.html)) By the time of his death, Bishop Bompas was an icon of missionary self-sacrifice to Anglicans in Canada and Britain.((H.A. Cody, //An Apostle of the North.// Introduction by William R. Morrison and Kenneth S. Coates. The University of Alberta Press, 2002: LXXVI.))