Richard John Bowen (1868 – 1952)

Richard Bowen trained with the Church Missionary Society at Islington College, London.¹⁾ While still a student, in 1894, Bowen received a request from the Church Missionary Society asking him to go to the assistance of Bishop Bompas of the Diocese of Selkirk (now Yukon). Bompas, focused on his Indigenous congregants, was feeling the pressure and challenge of increasing numbers of prospectors in the Fortymile River mining district. Bowen accepted the challenge and took special courses in scale drawing, building construction, carpentry, blacksmithing, tinsmithing, wheel-wrighting, medical, dental and theological studies. A month after graduating in 1895, Bowen packed a seven-year outfit for his expedition.²⁾ He had a large chest of tools in his baggage and a little concertina which he taught himself to play on the voyage from England.³⁾ Bowen was to be supported at Buxton Mission, Forty Mile by funds at the bishop’s disposal.⁴⁾

Bowen arrived at St. Michael, Alaska on 29 June 1895 and met the first boat coming from the interior, the sternwheeler Arctic, on July16th. Mrs. Selina Bompas was on the boat, coming to welcome the new missionary to the diocese. They travelled together up the Yukon River to the Buxton Mission, at the mouth of the Fortymile River. It was the last boat of the season and Bowen was greeted by Rev. Bompas who immediately took passage on the Arctic to visit communities upriver from the mission. Bowen was left in charge of Mrs. Bompas, teacher and matron Miss McDonald, and nine mixed blood school children. The community included the mission on an island upsteam of the mining community of Forty Mile, and the under construction North-West Mounted Police compound across the Fortymile River.⁵⁾

Bowen’s direction was to work with the Indigenous population and he held services at Buxton Mission and travelled to the mouth of the Klondike River and to Ketchemstock in Alaska. However, Bishop Bompas was most worried about the lack of morality among the miners adversely affecting his teachings to the First Nations and encouraged Bowen to visit the miners, freighters, saloon keepers, gamblers and readers and get to know the community. He travelled with a freighter on a two-week trip to the miners on Glacier and Miller creeks in November 1895.⁶⁾ Eventually, Bishop Bompas told Bowen to severe his relationship with the Church Missionary Society and dedicate himself to a ministry in the Forty Mile community. Bompas appealed to the Colonial and Continental Church Society in London and the organization offered a grant of $500 arrived to support Bowen’s new mission. Bowen took the logs from a half-built dancehall at Buxton and hauled them down to Forty Mile to build a church. Bompas purchased the logs as he disapproved of the project.⁷⁾ In May 1896, Bowen began services as the first Yukon church devoted to the miners.⁸⁾

That spring there was a rush of miners and prospectors from Forty Mile to Circle, Alaska. New missionaries, Rev. H.A. and Mrs. Naylor and Mr. F.F. Flewelling, arrived at Forty Mile on a boat in July 1896 and Bowen boarded the boat for the return trip to St. Michael to make sure the mission supplies were delivered that season. He handed over his cabin to the Naylors while he was away. Bompas had discussed loaning Bowen to Bishop Rowe of Alaska so he could follow his congregation downriver and Bowen was acquainted with this plan when he met Bishop Rowe at St. Michael. He had no equipment except his personal bible, hymn books and some theological reading.) Bowen spent the majority of the winter of 1896 and the spring of 1897 at Circle and the surrounding camps.⁹⁾

News was arriving at Circle about the gold strike on the Klondike River and Bowen watched his congregation dwindle again as miners left for the new strike. He received word from Bishop Bompas to take up duties back in his own diocese but in Dawson where he knew many of the men. He left Circle in early June and reached Forty Mile on 10 June 1897 where he met the missionary teacher Susan Mellett. Bowen arrived in Dawson on the 17 June 1897. His first chore was to move the previous missionary’s house out of the area chosen by Constantine for the Police Reserve and rebuilt it at the current site of St. Paul’s Anglican church. Frederick Flewelling’s 20’ x 16’ log rectory, may have been the first house built in Dawson, erected in 1896. ¹⁰⁾

Hearing that Bishop Bompas was ill, Bowen travelled to Forty Mile where Bompas discussed his plan of having Bowen and Millet marry and stay at Forty Mile while Bompas took over the newly-established church at Dawson and get much needed medical care for his scurvy. However, Bompas condition worsened, and he travelled back to Forty Mile where Susan Bowen cared for him until the boat arrived in the spring of 1898 with Mrs. Bompas as a passenger. At this point, Susan joined Richard Bowen in Dawson. ¹¹⁾ Bowen was busy trying to get a church erected and furnished with the help of Mr. McLeod, a carpenter from Winnipeg. He joined the mission as a teacher and Industrial Missionary and Bowen hoped he would start industrial classes for the First Nations. McLeod resigned the mission and took up mining but not before the church was erected and furnished in the fall of 1898.¹²⁾

Rev. Bowen contracted typhoid malarial fever in May 1898 [1899] and he and Susan returned to England for his convalescence. Bishop Bompas promised not to call them unless he was desperate, and the call came within the year to build a church at Whitehorse. The Bowens came in on the second passenger train after the White Pass railroad was finished in 1900.¹³⁾ Bowen held the first services in Whitehorse in a small tent, but construction of the log church still standing on Elliot Street was completed in October 1900. The chancel was partitioned off and the Bowen’s lived in it for the winter. Bowen also travelled to hold services in the railway camps of the White Pass railway. He described the work in Whitehorse as being the same as in all other places he had been stationed, being mechanical, educational, and ministerial.¹⁴⁾ Bowen calls the Whitehorse church the fourth church he erected and planned.¹⁵⁾

In the spring of 1903, Bowen became seriously ill again, and the Bowens left the Yukon for good in May.[Bowen's text in “Incidences” says 1904.]¹⁶⁾ Rev. I.O Stringer arrived in November 1903 to take up Bowen’s work in Whitehorse.¹⁷⁾ Rev. Bowen served at Nanaimo and Ladysmith, British Columbia from 1907 to 1925 and was the district secretary of the Bible Society.¹⁸⁾ He was licensed in the Diocese of Huron from 1930 to 1952.¹⁹⁾

Bowen’s little concertina and the tools he used to build the log church are held at the Old Log Church Museum in Whitehorse.