Rev. McDonald used Fort McPherson as a base for his extensive missionary work throughout the Mackenzie and Peel River areas and at the fledgling Anglican missions as far west at Rampart House and Fort Yukon in Russian Alaska. His work soon eclipsed the evangelizing efforts of the itinerant Oblate Fathers, who were further handicapped by the inhospitality of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Under McDonald’s tenure, St. Matthew’s Mission secured a solid following of local Gwich’in and a new mission house and church building were constructed in 1877–78.
The mission day school at McPherson served local Gwich’in children intermittently for many decades, often depending on the availability of Rev. McDonald and his successors who travelled extensively throughout this vast parish. Schooling was interrupted for extended periods due to serious disease outbreaks, which affected pupils, their families and mission staff as well. The 1850s and 1860s were extremely difficult times when Fort McPherson was ravaged by successive epidemics of mumps, smallpox and scarlet fever, inflicted on the community by white traders returning to Peel’s River Post from the “outside.” Between 1858 and 1871, the total population of McPherson fell from 337 to 164 and, in the year 1865 alone, the HBC reported more than 1,000 deaths throughout the Mackenzie District. Many deaths were also attributed to tuberculosis, which remained a chronic health problem well into the 20th century.
About 1899, Ottawa began to provide a small annual stipend for the day school principal (missionary) and lay teacher. After 1917, some children were sent far south to the new St. Peter’s Indian Residential School at Hay River. However, these Teetl’it Gwichin students were “non-treaty’ (not entitled to normal treaty benefits) and were admitted on a case by case basis and usually if they were orphans or from destitute families.
The signing of Treaty 11 in 1921, embraced all the Gwich’in and other peoples of the Dene Nation in the western half of the Northwest Territories, north of 60 and up to the Arctic coast. Through the 1920s, Indian Affairs and the territorial government became closely involved in the education of these native children and more were authorized to attend the Hay River School and it’s successor Anglican school at Aklavik, which opened in 1936. The Mission Day School continued to serve a growing number of local “treaty children”—those likely on the waiting lists for the Hay River and Aklavik schools, and some who were non-native.
In 1946 St. Matthew’s Mission constructed a new day school but before it opened Ottawa purchased the school and assumed responsibility for all day schooling in the Territories. Thus began the era of the federal day school in Fort McPherson. This school soon became overcrowded and a large replacement facility was opened in 1952. At Aklavik, a similar federal day school also opened that year and, as a result, the enrolment at All Saints Residential School quickly reached capacity. Some students unable to be accommodated were boarded at a temporary hostel in Fort McPherson, opened in late 1951 and operated by the Anglican Church without government funding. This hostel took in 20 students, all boys.
Ottawa soon recognized the need for a large modern hostel at Fort McPherson. In 1955, plans were announced for an ambitious student residence construction program in several communities throughout the Northwest Territories, including McPherson. The student residences would be built by the government but operated by the Anglican or Roman Catholic churches. In each respective community, native students would attend the existing or planned federal day schools, which would also accommodate Inuit, white and Métis children. At Fort McPherson, a 100-bed hostel opened in the fall of 1958 for school-age children from kindergarten to grade 8. It was named Fleming Hall in honour of the first Anglican Bishop of the Arctic, Archibald Lang Fleming, who served in this capacity 1933-1949. The student body comprised mostly local Gwich’in children (two thirds girls) from the Loucheux Band No. 7. Inuvialuit children from coastal settlements attended the Aklavik residential school and its successor, Stringer Hall, which opened at Inuvik in 1959. Church administration of Fleming Hall ended in 1969 when responsibility was transferred to the Department of Education of the Northwest Territories.
Earn 10 points!