In 1877, the Church Missionary Society persuaded Rev. James Hall to relocate his Anglican mission at Fort Rupert, BC to nearby Alert Bay. The following year, Rev. Hall built a mission house where day schooling was first provided for native children, mostly drawn from the local reserve—ancestors of today’s Nimpkish Band. It would soon be expanded into a full residential school. The mission was located on Cormorant Island, off the northeast shore of Vancouver Island. The adjacent village of Alert Bay soon became a thriving commercial fishing centre, the livelihood for native and non-native alike.
As Alert Bay was an ocean port and close to the shipping lanes along the B.C. coast, the Anglican Mission was well situated to offer schooling for First Nations children drawn from communities along the North Coast between Alert Bay and the Naas River, including the Queen Charlotte Islands. The only other Anglican boarding school on the coast had been in operation briefly at the fledgling Metlakatla Mission, near Prince Rupert; it closed about 1878.
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