The Stone-Campbell Movement began in Canada through the migration of Baptists from Scotland to the Maritime Provinces and Ontario in the early nineteenth century.

The Stone-Campbell Movement began in Canada through the migration of Baptists from Scotland to the Maritime Provinces and Ontario in the early nineteenth century. While the writings of Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone ultimately had profound impact on the Movement in Canada, as did migrations and educational influence from the Movement in the United States, the story of the Canadian Movement is not complete without the conjoining story of westward migration of early Scottish and Scotch Baptist settlers and ideas. A lingering creative tension between the Stone-Campbell Movement’s historic motifs — “restoration,” “unity,” and “mission” — characterizes the ethos of the Movement in Canada as it continues to define itself at the dawn of the twenty-first century. 

Founded July 1, 1867, Canada is a federal union of ten provinces and three territories. The latter include the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. The only Stone-Campbell congregation in these territories meets at Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The province of Quebec, populous but French-speaking and predominantly Roman Catholic, has known a small Stone-Campbell presence since the early twentieth century, at least in Montreal. Three Churches of Christ meet in Montreal; one in Quebec City; one in Plessisville. Newfoundland and Labrador had United States military congregations in the 1950s and 1960s, at St. John’s, Argentia, Stephenville, and Goose Bay. Newfoundland has one congregation in Harbour Grace established in 1996. Hence the story of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Canada unfolds principally in the eight provinces that compose the Maritimes, Ontario, the Prairies, and British Columbia. 

1. The Canadian Maritimes 

The Maritime Provinces of Canada — New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island — witnessed the beginning of the Stone-Campbell Movement as early as 1810. The first advocates of this thinking were of Scottish background. Four key leaders came to the Maritimes with beliefs and practices that eventually led to the development of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Churches of Christ, and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). 

These four influential individuals were John R. Stewart, Alexander Crawford, James Murray, and John Stevenson. John R. Stewart came to Prince Edward Island, settling in the Crossroads area near Charlottetown in 1809. Stewart had been deeply influenced by the Scotch Baptists of his homeland. Although he had not been immersed, he started a congregation in Crossroads/Keppoch where the Lord’s Supper was administered weekly. This was the first restorationist congregation in Canada, just a year after Thomas and Alexander Campbell formed the Brush Run church in the United States. 

Alexander Crawford, born 1786 in Argyllshire, Scotland, came to the Yarmouth area of Nova Scotia from the Island of Arran in November 1810. Crawford had come under the influence of the Haldane brothers of Scotland and had seen the remarkable revival of evangelical religion in Scotland as a result of their “non-denominational, lay” effort. Crawford had been a student at the Haldane Seminary in Edinburgh prior to coming to Canada, and had been present during the controversial acceptance of baptism by immersion by Robert and James Haldane. It is obvious from Crawford’s teaching that some of his thinking bore the influence of the Scotch Baptists more than that of the Haldanes. He believed in and advocated mutual ministry, and rejected all creeds, paid ministry, and emotionalism, preferring the “rational” faith of the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1811 he visited Prince Edward Island and baptized several, including John Stewart. Crawford became the first person to administer baptism by immersion in Prince Edward Island. Eventually he moved to the Island and became the most important early leader of the Movement there. 

James Murray was immersed in 1809 and became a member of the Scotch Baptist church in Fogglyloan, Scotland. Arriving in Nova Scotia in May 1811, he became the driving force behind what became known as the Congregation of Disciples of Christ at River John. This name was used at the time of their incorporation in November 1855, but the congregation had been meeting weekly since June 18, 1815. 

Although raised in a Presbyterian minister’s home, John Stevenson eventually became a Scotch Baptist in his hometown of Paisley, Scotland. He made his way to Prince Edward Island in 1820, where he put down roots in New Glasgow. By the early 1820s he was leading a congregation in his barn that weekly remembered the Lord’s Supper and preached “New Testament Christianity.” 

In addition to the efforts of these four men, a significant work started in Halifax in the mid-1820s. It became increasingly important as a conduit for early influence from the United States on the previously started congregations. One key figure in Halifax was Richard Creed of England. The Halifax work was an outgrowth of St. Paul’s Anglican Church and was first referred to as a “Baptist church.” In 1825 Alexander Crawford heard of this work while attending the Baptist Association meeting in Nova Scotia, and he began communicating with the congregation. 

Around this time, William W. Ashley introduced Alexander Campbell’s writings to the Halifax group. Ashley was born in North Carolina and came to Nova Scotia in the 1820s after marrying a woman from Milton, Nova Scotia. According to the 1832 Millennial Harbinger, Ashley had come into contact with Campbell’s writings through a certain “FEW.” This was apparently Francis W. Emmons of Lisbon, Ohio, where famed preacher Walter Scott began his evangelistic efforts. This is especially noteworthy since Scott himself had Scotch Baptist connections through his onetime friend George Forrester of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Such “restoration” influences as Scott on Ashley would probably have enabled a more sympathetic hearing in the Maritimes for Campbell’s views than for other early American church reformers. Ashley traveled much of the Maritimes on behalf of the Temperance Movement, and carried Campbell’s Christian Baptist with him. 

In 1833 the Halifax congregation published the first journal of the Stone-Campbell Movement in the Maritimes. Entitled The Christian Gleaner, it was primarily a reprint of the Christian Baptist. It was in Halifax that the Canadian Movement and the Movement begun in the United States began to converge. At the same time, some of the aforementioned restoration pioneers encountered difficulties with the Associated Baptists of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Most of the churches had joined the association, but they were not happy with several aspects of their involvement. At a lengthy meeting on September 30, 1833, at Crossroads, Prince Edward Island, this controversy came to a head. The Prince Edward Island archives contain information on this meeting under the heading “a last ditch stand by Nova Scotia Associated Baptist Missionaries.” The main controversy concerned those marrying outside the Scotch Baptist umbrella, with the more conservative Island churches believing that those who did so should be excommunicated. There was also disagreement over creeds and clergy. The Association required that all participating churches would have to swear acceptance of the Articles of Faith and Practice and that they would be led by ordained “clergy.” 

New Glasgow, an Island church, was one of the congregations that refused to accept these requirements. This congregation established contact with Halifax, inquiring of the Nova Scotia congregation how New Glasgow could be set up as a “church” without accepting creeds or confessions of faith. In October 1836 Halifax replied with a letter informing them of how such a church could be constituted published in the December The Christian Gleaner. In February, 1837, as a companion to the earlier correspondence, The Gleaner published a document written by a London Baptist Church titled “Christian Principles &c. of a Church of Christ in Halifax, N.S.,” as a statement of belief. 

The impact of the Movement in the United States spread further under the influence of William Wentworth Eaton, originally of Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, but now working in Saint John, New Brunswick. He had Primitive Methodist roots, but had become familiar with the restoration principles from Ashley’s visits. Eventually Eaton started The Christian, a magazine devoted to “the Faith and Practice of Primitive Christianity.” Eaton eventually taught at Bethany College, the college started by Alexander Campbell in western Virginia, and became a strong voice for the Stone-Campbell Movement. 

Connections with the Movement in the United States influenced the Maritime churches in three important ways. First, some of the Baptists from the Nova Scotia and the New Brunswick Association had always had problems with these “Scotch Baptists.” The relationship with the Movement from the States allowed them to label these people “Campbellites” and remove from them the Baptist name and connection. Second, there was much more talk about baptism and its design being for the remission of sins. Third, a stronger desire and emphasis on the unity of believers and a call for the restoration of New Testament Christianity as its basis became the focus in the Maritimes. 

Eventually these new congregations began to organize themselves. On Prince Edward Island, some association was in place by the 1850s. A work entitled “Minute Book PEI Christian Book 2: 1869-1925” has been preserved. The fact that it is Book 2 indicates an earlier record book. By 1855 churches in the Maritimes were gathering for what they called “the Annual.” This continued each year until this event became known as the Maritime Christian Missionary Society in 1902, which continues today among Canadian Disciples. 

The issue of the legitimacy of instrumental music in worship was never as contentious an issue as other ones in the Movement in the Maritimes. While the visit of the restorationist hardliner Benjamin Franklin to the area in 1869 drew large crowds and contributed to the conservatism of Maritime churches, his firm belief that preachers had to trust the Lord and the people for support helped foster a major dilemma. The “paid clergy” issue seems to have been more controversial and divisive than the use of musical instruments. The one exception was in West Gore, Nova Scotia, where instruments became truly divisive, apparently as a result of the move of the Tallman brothers to West Gore from Ontario in the early twentieth century. While in West Gore, the Tallmans started the Maritime Bible and Literary College, and this became a hub of anti-instrumental influence for the churches. Other than in West Gore, the use of an organ did not divide the churches until the 1950s when several missionaries from the United States came to the area. The a cappella constituency remains small in the region, with only six congregations in the Maritimes, and none on Prince Edward Island at present.

In 1922 most congregations of the Churches of Christ, conservative Christian Churches, and Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) became a part of the All Canada Program. “All Canada” was an attempt to synergize the efforts of provincial missions agencies through a centralization of organization and stewardship initiatives and a standardization of Canadian literature and curriculum for boys and girls. The governing body of the All Canada Program, called the All Canada Committee, was largely dominated by leaders who were theologically more liberal, several of whom where advocates of “open membership.” The organization of the Canadian churches followed much the same course as in the United States, and effected the same divergent outcomes. Mounting tensions over the place of “agencies,” emerging hierarchies, the nature of the church, and open membership continued for the next three decades. Finally, in August 1948, at the Prince Edward Island session of the Maritime Convention in New Glasgow, nine Island leaders presented a declaration marking their withdrawal from All Canada due to modernism and open membership. This sparked a heated debate that went on for many years, resulting in time in the withdrawal of most of the Disciple congregations from the main fold. At present only four congregations remain with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and all of these are located in Nova Scotia. 

The largest branch of the Stone-Campbell heritage in the Maritimes, therefore, is what many call the “independents,” Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. Of a total of forty-four churches of the Stone-Campbell heritage, thirty-four are independent. Total membership is about 2,900, with about 2,300 of these being independent. Since the division of the 1950s, these churches have rallied around Maritime Christian College (est. 1960) and Partners in Atlantic Canada Evangelism (PACE) along with other efforts to spread the restoration plea. 

Efforts have been made to initiate fellowship between the three branches of the Movement. Often speakers have been used from different wings for lectures or gatherings such as the Maritime Christian Fellowship. The Church of Christ Development Company, of Disciples origin, has assisted several of the “independent” building projects. 

2. The Movement in Ontario 

The beginnings of the Movement in Ontario lie with the immigration of Baptists from Scotland in the early nineteenth century. In Ontario those traditions interacted with the Christian Connection and the influence of Alexander Campbell. As these Baptist churches became a part of the Disciples of Christ they increasingly merged with the larger American Stone-Campbell Movement so that since the end of the nineteenth century the shape of the tradition has been determined largely by events in the United States, though it has continued to have its own character because of the uniquely Canadian context. 

2.1. Beginnings: The Haldanes 

Scotch Baptists immersed James Haldane in April 1808, six months before Alexander Campbell arrived in Glasgow to await departure for America. Already by 1805 the evangelistic movement that James and his brother Robert underwrote had led to the establishment of several Baptist churches of the English order in Scotland, including at Bellanoch in the West Highlands. County Argyll, where Bellanoch is located, is particularly important for the unfolding of the story. This county hosted an interconnected group of Haldane agents, and others influenced by the Haldanes, who would later emigrate to Canada West (i.e., Ontario). These individuals include James Black, born in Kilmartin parish, near Bellanoch, baptized by Dugald Sinclair in 1817, who came to southwestern Ontario, to Aldborough Township, in 1820; Donald McVicar, Haldane agent and ordained Baptist preacher, who also came to Aldborough in 1818; Dugald Sinclair, ordained Baptist, who followed McVicar as pastor at Bellanoch in 1815, moved the church to Lochgilphead, and emigrated to Lobo Township in 1831; and John McKellar, from Argyll, who came to Lobo Township around 1818, but whose group had communion only when McVicar, ordained, was present. Other leaders who emigrated from Scotland include Alex Anderson, from Perthshire, who came in 1832; John Menzies, a Scotch Baptist, also from Perthshire, c. 1821; and Alexander Stewart. Another early preacher was Edmund Sheppard, who came from Nottingham in 1843 as a Disciple. Geoffrey Ellis points out that “no individuals of American descent took a leading role in the establishment of the Disciples of Christ in Canada West.” 

2.2. Scottish and Scotch Baptists 

By 1834 Scottish Baptists of the English order and Scotch Baptists had separated, and their distinctions were brought to the Canadian frontier. The latter, who opposed an “ordained,” supported ministry and accepted only “mutual ministry,” were by far the smaller group. In Ontario their point of view was championed by David Oliphant, Sr., a Scotch Baptist who moved to Eramosa Township from Dundas (Hamilton) in 1832. This view of ministry was later promoted vigorously and rancorously by James Beaty, Sr. through the Bible Index (1872?–1893), with a lasting, divisive effect. Beaty, from County Caven, Ireland, came to Toronto in 1818 by way of New York City and became a prominent politician. 

2.3. Contacts with Campbell and Stone 

In the 1820s the Christian Connection established itself on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Its association, however, was not primarily with the movement of Barton Stone, whose “Christian” churches had loosely affiliated with the Christian Connection as early as 1810, but with the Connection as it came from the American Northeast by way of New York State. In 1825 a Conference was organized, and by 1834 it could report that there were about twenty churches. Three of these, at Keswick, Ringwood, and Stouffville, continue to this day as part of the Conference of Congregationalist Christian Churches, a group that has swelled from five churches to dozens across Canada thanks to a small exodus from the United Church at the end of the twentieth century. Joseph Ash, while a member of the Christian Connection, was reading both Alexander Campbell’s Millennial Harbinger and Barton Stone’s Christian Messenger. Stone’s death in 1844 left only the powerful influence of Campbell. At a meeting of its Conference in 1834 at Whitby — two years after the Stone and Campbell groups joined in the United States — the Christian Connection delegates had a vote on whether to join the Disciples. The proposal was defeated by the tie-breaking vote of the chair. Ash left, and historian Reuben Butchart credits him with establishing the first Disciples church in Ontario without Scottish Baptist or Scotch Baptist roots, at Cobourg in 1836. 

The ties with Campbell became increasingly strong, beginning in the 1830s. James Black read the Harbinger in 1833, introduced to it by David Oliphant, Sr.; Daniel Wiers, who, with others, started the Disciples church in Beamsville, read the Christian Baptist in the 1830s. In a report to the Millennial Harbinger in August 1843 a group of sixteen Ontario churches is enumerated; the study by Geoffrey Ellis adds eight to these for a total of twenty-four and a combined membership of over 500. Relations with Campbell were deepened when students like David Oliphant, Jr. (graduated 1844), and Edmund Sheppard studied at Bethany College (c. 1846-49). The exposure to Campbell’s thought brought with it the two poles of his ecclesiology: (1) the unity of all believers; and (2) restoration. The tension between the two would later fracture the entire North American movement, in Canada as in the United States. 

Campbell’s visit to Ontario in 1855 was particularly important for cementing relations. James Black had suggested a visit in a letter published in the March 1842 Millennial Harbinger, but by the time Campbell arrived he was sixty-six and suffering from rheumatism. Nevertheless, he traveled through the Niagara Peninsula, to Toronto and east of Toronto, to the old churches in Esquesing and Everton, and by way of London to Detroit. Early in his trip he stayed overnight with James Black, who had also been a Presbyterian; in Toronto he visited with prominent church leaders and preached in a large Baptist meetinghouse; in London he preached in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in Detroit at the Lutheran meetinghouse. Such invitations indicate his ecumenical bearing and the esteem in which he was held by the larger Christian community. 

2.4. The Editors 

The direction of the Movement in Ontario, as in the United States, was profoundly affected by those who edited church papers. Joseph Ash edited the first of these, the Christian Vindicator, which appeared in June 1837. The most prolific and influential editor in the mid-nineteenth century was David Oliphant, Jr., who edited the first of several papers, Witness of Truth, from Picton in 1845. His papers continued until 1865, and Disciples on the north and south shores of Lake Ontario generally aligned themselves with the conservatism that he had received from his Scotch Baptist father. Along with his own editorial work, in earlier issues he reprinted articles from the Christian Baptist and Millennial Harbinger. 

Oliphant’s conservatism paled alongside the combatively anticlerical views of James Beaty, Sr., whose views shaped the Bible Index, edited for the most part by nephews James Beaty, Jr., and Robert Beaty. The Christian Worker, edited by H. B. Sherman, appeared as a counterpoint to the Index. It was published in Owen Sound, then Meaford, from 1881 to 1886. George Munro and T. L. Fowler edited The Ontario Evangelist (later The Canadian Evangelist, then The Disciple of Christ and Canadian Evangelist) from 1886 to 1896. 

In the twentieth century the most important papers have been The Canadian Disciple, published in its early years in Toronto and Owen Sound, and edited for the first seven years by Reuben Butchart; and The Gospel Herald, begun in Radville, Saskatchewan, in 1936 but published from 1953 in Beamsville, Ontario; its editors included Robert Sinclair, J. C. Bailey, and from 1953 Roy C. Merritt and Eugene Perry. The “independent” Christian Churches/Churches of Christ started The Canadian Christian Harbinger in Toronto in 1962, and it continued there until its relocation to British Columbia in 1976/77; it ceased publication in 1989. 

2.5. Tensions and Divisions 

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, issues that were present from the beginning in Ontario became points of division. Those issues related especially to methods of evangelism and to questions of ministry in the local church. At the start evangelism was largely a matter of “lay” preachers, who were farmers or in business, gathering groups around themselves — made easier by a common emigration, with the preaching sometimes in Gaelic — and making preaching trips to visit churches and start new ones. These churches were for the most part rural. But society was advancing, people were moving to the cities, travel was easier; prominent American preachers like Benjamin Franklin or Isaac Errett could make trips into Ontario to preach and debate. Bright young people went to the United States to study, to Lexington or Nashville; some returned, but many did not, a problem that continues in the twenty-first century. 

By 1900 there were about eighty churches in Ontario, but they had already been drawn into the American orbit and were dividing along the lines of division there. “A controversial spirit within,” as Geoffrey Ellis calls it, sapped energies and played havoc with the plea for Christian unity. 

James Black proposed the establishment in Canada of a branch of the Highland Baptists Missionary Society, an organization similar to the successful Haldane initiative. In 1846 the first formally organized “cooperation” began at Norval; Black was the primary figure in its emergence. The idea was to form an overseeing group that would hire evangelists to work with churches to spread the gospel and begin new churches. In 1870 the Grey County Cooperation was formed at Meaford; seven churches pledged support and resolved to hire an evangelist. The most important of these local efforts was the one Black started, and in the 1870s cooperation was centered mainly in Wellington County. In 1883 it gave way to the “Ontario Cooperation of Disciples of Christ” (which continues to the present), and in 1921 it gave impetus to the formation of the All-Canada Committee of the Disciples. The increasing size of such organizations seems to have concretized opposition: small local efforts were one thing, a national organization another. David Oliphant, Jr., was a major critic, and it was his ongoing arguments with Benjamin Franklin of the American Christian Review that changed Franklin’s position. 

The idea of located ministers made advances in the 1870s, which naturally led to the question of their education. The College of the Disciples opened at St. Thomas in 1895 and had a positive impact on the growth of churches in southwestern Ontario. It continued until about 1910. Then Disciples sought out relations with the University of Toronto and McMaster University for the training of ministers. This continued until 1958 when the College of Churches of Christ in Canada began funding ministerial candidates at accredited universities and seminaries. For a period early in the twentieth century, a cappella churches operated Beamsville Bible School (1903-16); later, in 1952, Great Lakes Christian College began in the same town; a provincial charter (1987) enabled its sister institution, Great Lakes Bible College, to confer degrees. The Bible College operates now in Waterloo, out of the facilities of the Waterloo Church of Christ. For their part the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ opened Ontario Bible College (1939-43), Toronto Christian Seminary (1958-64), then Ontario Christian Seminary (1972-98). Arrangements exist with McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton whereby adherents of the Movement can substitute historical and polity courses for those required of Baptists seeking degrees. Educational efforts have always struggled against the relatively small size of their constituency. 

A final source of division involved worship, in particular the use of organs in worship. Their introduction in the 1880s was not a matter of fellowship for some; for others it was, and certainly it became increasingly such. When the American census in 1906 for the first time recorded Churches of Christ separately, the same division existed in Ontario. Division in Ontario at the end of the nineteenth century indicated a 60/40 ratio of Disciples to Churches of Christ. 

2.6. The Twentieth Century and Beyond 

Trajectories begun in the nineteenth century continued through the twentieth. At the end of the twentieth century there were about 95 congregations of the Stone-Campbell tradition in Ontario. Some 72 of these are Churches of Christ; about a dozen each are Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) or else Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. Their combined membership is probably about 6,000. The significant events of the twentieth century are the emergence of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ amidst the restructuring of the Disciples; union conversations, from 1969 to 1986, between Disciples and the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church; the development of church camping programs at Selkirk (Disciples), Omagh (Churches of Christ), Primrose (Christian Churches/Churches of Christ), and other locations; in 1968 Grove Park Home for Senior Citizens opened in Barrie, a ministry of Churches of Christ; in 2001 an Archives was established at McMaster Divinity College. 

3. Western Canada 

3.1. The Prairies 

While most of the other regions of Canada by 1870 had taken on substantially the religious, social, and political character they have today, the Canadian prairies remained virtually unsettled. New settlement was spurred with the National Policy of 1875, instituted under the leadership of Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald. Articulating and acting on sentiments long held in central Canada, MacDonald launched a process of settlement and protection of the Canadian West: “If we don’t settle it, the Yankees will!” 

The North-West Mounted Police were created in 1873, and within two years had established outposts across the prairies. By 1885 the transcontinental railway reached the west coast of British Columbia, opening the vast economic opportunities of prairie lands and resources. The same year the North West Rebellion led by Louis Riel was put down in Saskatchewan. The consequent historiographical controversy aside, the imposition of a British (vs. French) land survey system made possible “law and order” in the West, as well as one of the promises of the National Policy, 160 acres of “free” homestead land for any male age 21 or older. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the trickle of immigration so induced became a flood of “homesteaders” from Eastern Canada, the British Isles, the United States, and central Europe. Heirs of the Stone-Campbell Movement were among them. They took their place in farming and in the permanent communities of the emerging “prairie” provinces of Canada: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. 

3.2. Manitoba 

The first Church of Christ on the Canadian Prairies met November 10, 1881, at a Red River settlement called Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. It represented the convergence of the aspirations of some Ontario women who sent Andrew Scott, an Ontario man, and the presence of a group of families who had migrated from Ridgeway, Ontario, in 1871. The Thomas Sissons, William Kitson, Mrs. J. Conner, A. Yuill, Peter Campbell, and F. Ogletree families had kept their faith through communion and worship in their homes through the intervening years. In 1882 a meeting hall was erected, followed in 1903 with a substantial stone building that became a Manitoba Heritage site, ultimately sold to another Christian group in 1995. 

Through the impetus of M. P. Hayden of Ontario and the evangelistic ministry of J. A. Romig of the American Christian Missionary Society, the First Church of Christ (Kate Street, Winnipeg; later Home Street Christian, and now Broadway Disciples United) was established in 1902. This was the first collaboration of American and Canadian organizations in the West and led to the Western Canada Christian Missionary Association, which proved to be too far reaching for lasting effect. George H. Stewart from Everton, Ontario, also played a key role in the Kate Street endeavor, which later became Home Street Christian Church. In the 1970s there was a split at Home Street over the proposal to “pair” with the United Church of Canada. The Spruce Street Church of Christ emerged for about ten years before being subsumed by charismatic interests. In the late 1990s Home Street became Broadway Disciples United, the oldest Disciples congregation in the West, now largely Filipino in membership. 

The oldest Church of Christ was established in 1888 when a large number from the congregation at Meaford, Ontario, moved to Carman, Manitoba. Folk from Carman as well as the British Isles began to meet in a new assembly in Winnipeg in 1901. 

With help from the Portage and Home Street churches, together with continued funding from Ontario, St. James Church of Christ (Disciples) was established in 1906. There had been earlier attempts at Minnedosa, Rat Portage (now Kenora), Swan River, Riding Mountain, and Norwood. Fluctuations in population brought about by the vagaries of prairie farming — including weather patterns and produce prices, urbanization, and a lack of leadership — all militated against deep roots for most of these works. The diaries of M. P. Hayden, an early Stone-Campbell evangelist from Ontario, provide primary insight into the “life situation” of early church work in Manitoba. At its peak prior to World War II, there were fifteen Stone-Campbell Movement congregations. Today there is one congregation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and two of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, all in Winnipeg and all second-generation Canadian-Filipino. There are also seven Churches of Christ in Manitoba, predominantly rural, with a total membership of about 800. 

3.3. Saskatchewan 

From 1905, when Saskatchewan joined the Confederation of Canada, until 1915 ten churches were planted in Saskatchewan. With the exception of two (Saskatoon and Regina) all were rural. The first Saskatchewan church was the result of the western migration of the E. C. Jones family from Wiarton, Ontario, in 1890. For a number of years they opened their home to neighbors on Sundays for worship and communion. In 1906 the Joneses moved to Milestone, on the “Sioux Line” (railway) south of Regina, and invited J. A. Romig for evangelistic meetings. A congregation was organized and a building erected the same year. 

The Yellow Grass congregation arose out of the work of the John M. Ford family, arriving from Bowmanville, Ontario, in 1904. Historian Reuben Butchart calls Ford “the founder of the Saskatchewan [independent and Disciples] churches.” With the assistance of the Milestone church and the evangelistic efforts of Romig, the church was established in 1907. The presence of the railway to the United States, together with the organization of the church, made Yellow Grass an attractive place for immigrants from the midwestern United States. The church became a blending of Eastern Canadian and American church cultures, a pattern that would become firmly established in the Canadian West. Yellow Grass became distinctive in its prolific contribution to Christian leadership. To Butchart’s record of 14 may be added 21, for a total of 35 who have entered ministry over the last five decades. While most from the early years made contributions to the Movement in the United States, among whom are Harold Hockley (former minister of the influential Westwood Cheviot Christian Church in Cincinnati) and Floyd Clark (Academic Dean, Johnson Bible College), others have remained to work in Canada. 

In 1910 the first Church of Christ congregation at Wawota, Saskatchewan, emerged, again through the gathering of immigrants from Ontario and Great Britain. Mary Muirhead observes that it was not until the 1950s that American churches began to send “missionaries” north. A pattern emerged in the development of the early Saskatchewan Churches of Christ whereby the one-room “schoolhouse,” allowed for and built in every township under the National Policy, became the center of religious life as well. A number of young women were teachers, notably Ellen Black (La Rose), Elsie Black (Cutting), Mary Curtis (Schroeder), Clarice Hurlburt (Mooney), Lavine Jelsing (Bailey), Signe Jelsing (MacLeod), Pearl Perry (Orr), and Lillian Torkelson. These women used their schools for community goodwill, church planting, and “protracted meetings” held by itinerant evangelists. One at Brooking lasted for forty-seven days under the preaching of H. A. Rogers. There were very few “located” preachers in the early days, a result of economic necessity more than religious practice. Consequently most of the teachers and preachers were “tentmakers” who supported themselves with other vocations. H. A. Rogers was a farmer and beekeeper; W. Orr was a carpenter; D. A. Sinclair farmed; and H. E. Forman worked on the railway and preached in Regina. 

A building for the Regina Church of Christ (later Regina Avenue Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]) was purchased in 1919 by R. J. Westaway, president of the Missionary Society of the Church of Christ in Saskatchewan. John H. Wells of St. Louis, Missouri, arrived in 1920 to establish the church. In 2000 the building was sold. 

All streams of the Stone-Campbell Movement utilized regular extra-congregational gatherings for instruction and encouragement. For the establishment and growth of the Churches of Christ these were especially important. The first Saskatchewan summer “Bible schools” were held at Minton (1931), Radville (1932), Perryville (1933), and Horse Creek (Bengough) (1936). It was during the winter school at Radville in 1945-46 that plans came together for a Christian high school, Radville Christian College. Land was donated and a building constructed by W. Orr. Lillian Torkelson was the first principal. This school later moved to Weyburn, where it became Western Christian College. In 2003 it moved to Regina after a number of years in Dauphin, Manitoba. Macrorie Camp (1957-95) was also influential in helping to overcome sectarian tendencies in the West. It was established to advance fellowship between Churches of Christ and “independent” Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. Carl Ketcherside was a frequent speaker, and the camp contributed much to encouraging a more irenic approach to the restoration program. 

3.4. Alberta 

Douglas Barrie, in his thesis on the Movement in Alberta, attests that “The early leaders of the Restoration Movement in [Alberta] were pioneers in the finest sense of that word.” Many had come to farm or ranch, but at the same time had a real vision for putting in place the Christian roots for nation building. They farmed to pay expenses, and had a desire to establish strong churches in the new land. Others came: businessmen, teachers, tradespeople, civil servants, and so forth. M. B. Ryan commented that they possessed the “shepherd heart.” 

The first organized work in Alberta was the Broadway Church of Christ (now Nanton), established in 1904. The Montgomery, Carmack, and Mrs. Samuel McMaster families were newly arrived from Missouri by way of Washington state and were instrumental in the establishment of the church. It began, like so many churches, as a Sunday School in the home. The first building was built on McMaster family land and served as both a school and a church. The first leaders, both Ontario natives, served as evangelists and schoolteachers. The surrounding communities of Champion, Reid Hill, Barons, and Vulcan were evangelized. 

Within a decade, there were seventeen congregations prospering in Alberta: Great Bend, Erskine, Ponoka, Lethbridge, Calgary Central, Edmonton First, Edmonton Church of Christ (a cappella), Calgary Church of Christ (a cappella), Wrentham, Lake DeMay, Vermillion, Innisfree, Alix, Champion, Clyde, Stony Plain, and Black Diamond. 

The pattern worked well. Immigrants would arrive with their faith, and gather for Sunday School and the Lord’s Supper, sometimes for several years. R. H. Simpson, an Ontario merchant, conducted a Sunday School above his store at Great Bend. Hanna began a joint work of immigrants from Ontario, including a cappella folk, as a Sunday School in the home of Mrs. O. E. Payne. Shortly thereafter, the “scattered would be gathered.” M. B. Ryan, the Superintendent of the Alberta Christian Missionary Society and originally of Scotch Baptist parentage in Nova Scotia, figured prominently in this “gathering” of Christians into churches. He reported of the establishment of First Christian Church, Edmonton: “It is a cosmopolitan group, with members from Nova Scotia, Old Ontario, New Ontario, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Washington, but they were all Disciples of Christ to the core.” Evangelistic teams would often be invited to conduct meetings. Prominent among these were R. J. Westaway, J. W. Jenkins, J. A. Romig, and the Cave Sisters, the latter being an evangelistic team sponsored by the American Christian Missionary Society. 

Some realized their interest in the social dimensions of the gospel. Among them George F. Root and Gus Carl Bergman hosted the Alberta Cattleman’s Association in Erskine, Alberta, in 1905 and 1906. They were Disciples from Iowa, where they had been friends and partners. G. C. Bergman was later instrumental in the formation of the first church in Edmonton. Henry Wise Wood, one of the most politically influential Albertans of his day, moved to Carstairs, Alberta, from Hannibal, Missouri, in 1905. His social egalitarianism was firmly planted in his American Disciples roots, where he had been part of the Farmers Equity Movement. When he came north, he joined the Canadian Society of Equity and was a charter member of the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), serving as president of this provincial body from 1916 to 1931. He was also chairperson of the Alberta Wheat Pool Board from 1923 to 1937. He declined several leading political appointments. MacLean’s magazine called him the “Moses” of Alberta for his firm belief in agricultural cooperation. His opponents called him “the would-be Lenin of Canada.” For his service to agriculture in the Canadian West, King George V awarded him the “Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.” 

With the establishment of Alberta Bible College in 1932 in Lethbridge, indigenous resources for church leadership and planting began to emerge. Staff, graduates, and students led established congregations, and dependence on American or Eastern leadership began to wane, a process that has continued to the present day. Toward mid-century, liberal theology increased, and it was especially strident in the All Canada Committee. In spite of the consequent fading influence of agencies, thirteen churches were either formed or revived in the period 1945-60 in Alberta through the work of both Disciples and Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. In 1991 the Alberta Church Planting Association was formed, which has been a catalyst for three church plants in Alberta in the 1990s. 

Archibald McLean (1849-1920), president of the Foreign Christian Missionary Society and a native of Prince Edward Island, took great interest in the Alberta work and made trips to Alberta prior to his death in 1920. He was a passionate advocate of missions and was among those who planted the seed that has yielded effort and interest in missions that continues to the present. In the 1940s there was a surge of missionary support from Western Canada, mostly Alberta: Tom and Leota Rash, Frank and Marie Remple, David and Lois Rees, and Edna Hunt went to India; Bill and Melba Rees went to South Africa. In the 1960s J. C. Bailey of the Churches of Christ became a one-man advocate and catalyst for work in India. Throughout the 1990s there has been strong Western Canadian interest in sending foreign workers, whether these be Canadians (three career, eleven short-term missionaries) or internationals (seven in all) who received training at Alberta Bible College or Western Christian College and returned to their respective countries. 

At the end of the twentieth century there were thirty-two churches in Alberta (seventeen Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, ten Churches of Christ, four Christian Church [Disciples of Christ], and one “bridge” congregation). 

3.5. British Columbia 

Members of the Churches of Christ first settled in Victoria, British Columbia, during the first decade of the twentieth century. The Percy Bailey, Jaffray, and McMurchie families came from England and Ontario. In 1910 six other families banded together to purchase a small building in Vancouver. In turn, they amalgamated with a church started on Lulu Island (Richmond) and became the Oakridge Church. In the 1920s a church was begun in Creston. 

Similarly, in 1905 Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) began in Vancouver as a gathering of folk who had settled from Ontario and the Maritimes. Considerable funding for this effort came from the American Christian Missionary Society and from Ontario. In 1911 the work divided into First Christian and Central. The two reunited in 1918 as Shelton Memorial Church. 

As the economy fluctuated in a predominantly resources-based economy, congregations gained or lost members. By 1949 there was only one Church of Christ and one Disciples of Christ church, both in Vancouver. There were no Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in British Columbia. 

Between the 1950s and the early 1980s there was a surge of migration from eastern, central, and prairie provinces and the United States to the Vancouver area, as well as the interior. There were ten Christian Churches/Churches of Christ planted in these two decades: Nanaimo, Lumby, Westsyde (Kamloops), Blackpool, Vavenby, Clearwater, Armstrong, Coldstream (Vernon), Fort Fraser, and Wynndel. There were also three Bible Camps: Mt. Benson Christian Camp (Vancouver Island), Double V-M Bible Camp (Okanagan), and Dunn Lake Bible Camp (North Thompson). The key catalysts for this work were Don and Carolyn Albert, graduates of Minnesota Bible College who had come to Canada in 1958. Others have played key sustaining roles, most of them either on mission support or working at other jobs to support their ministry. 

In the same period Churches of Christ were started in Nanaimo, Salmon Arm, Vernon, Kelowna, Kamloops, Prince George, Abbotsford, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Surrey, Delta, Cranbrook, Prince Rupert, Revelstoke, and Port Alberni. A private Christian school has also been sponsored at Salmon Arm. Much of this activity was fueled by an influx of preachers into British Columbia who were supported fully by churches in the United States or eastern Canada. 

During the last two decades of the twentieth century the Stone-Campbell Movement in British Columbia has gone through a time of consolidation, redefinition, and struggle. Some of the works started during rapid expansion have proven to be unsustainable. There have been great challenges in developing indigenous support for the work. At the same time important progress has been made toward fellowship and cooperation between Christian Churches/Churches of Christ and Churches of Christ. 

3.6. Scattered Disciples — Lasting Effects 

Where many scattered Disciples in the early years of Western Canadian history were often assimilated into other churches, in at least two instances we find isolated families conducting Sunday Schools with the dream of establishing a church. The T. L. Rash family was one such family at Taber, Alberta, where Sunday School work beginning in 1918, sporadic evangelistic meetings over many years, and the continued influence of nearby ministers such as J. R. Chapman of Lethbridge finally resulted in an established church in 1954. A similar situation emerged in Grande Prairie, where the F. A. Johnston family had moved from Lacombe to Grande Prairie in 1910. M. B. Ryan and others made contact with them and encouraged them, but no resources were put into the establishment of a church. Sunday School was carried on, and it was reported in the 1922 yearbook that the group had a church membership of twenty. It took the collaboration of other dedicated individuals, including some from the Vulcan church, to help formally found the church in Grand Prairie in 1946. 

Many prairie churches, however, did not last. Factors such as the lack of leadership and the transient settlement patterns, as folk moved to the most productive land or to cities, militated against deep roots. The church at Zealandia did not last because the soil was poor and homesteading was not viable. Through the witness of that church C. H. Phillips came to Christ in “full obedience.” He would later found Alberta Bible College, Ontario Bible College, and, in the United States, Puget Sound Christian College. 

3.7. Unity, Tensions, and Divisions 

Many of the tensions and divisions of immigrant homelands were perpetuated in Western Canada. Divisions over hermeneutics and instrumental music were planted early in the West. This was the case despite the fact that there had been early “bridging” attempts, notably Hanna, Yellow Grass, and Central Church in Calgary, which had been reasonably successful. In a context of sectarianism that frowned on association between Church of Christ constituents and others, the light of unity glowed, however dimly. This is evidenced in two noble church planting experiments. In 1955 folk from both Churches of Christ and Christian Churches/Churches of Christ at Outlook, Saskatchewan, began to meet, and continue to do so. In 1973 folk from all three streams of the Stone-Campbell tradition at Westlock, Alberta, met for about a decade, before constituents of the Churches of Christ and the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ separated from Disciples. 

Alberta Bible College has played a significant role in promoting unity through the involvement of conciliatory speakers such as the late Carl Ketcherside at college events, the hosting of a Minister’s Institute in the 1960s and 1970s designed for leaders to study and fellowship, and the initiation of the Western Canadian Christian Convention in 1989 for all three streams. The College has also educated leaders for all three streams in Canada. Evidence that stronger bridges are already being put in place are found in the presence of board members of Alberta Bible College (1932–) and Camp Christian (1935–) from all three streams, a joint Western Canadian Ministers and Spouses Retreat (2000–), the sharing of camping and retreat programs and leadership in Alberta and British Columbia, and the continued flow of graduates from both Western Christian College and Alberta Bible College into all three streams of the Stone-Campbell Movement. 

In the case of Christian Churches/Churches of Christ (“independents”) and Disciples of Christ (“cooperatives”) in Western Canada, division has been muted from the beginning. The battle lines drawn in the Maritimes, Ontario, and the United States were never fully reproduced in Western Canada, at least as full-blown fractures, even to the present day. There were tensions, particularly over “open membership,” in the 1960s. Some of these are recorded in the minutes of the Board of Alberta Bible College. However, the view that most of these battles were “foreign” to their experience allowed a freer, more irenic spirit to prevail and even flourish in the West. 

Several factors have contributed to this. First was the cosmopolitan character of the life of the early Stone-Campbell churches in Canada. People from many different backgrounds came together voluntarily or there was no church. On an ideological level, this cosmopolitan balance established creative tensions that moderated extreme positions. Western Disciples have consequently had a tendency to be more conservative than many of their counterparts elsewhere, while Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in the West have had a tendency to be less sectarian than their counterparts elsewhere. Leading Disciples, such as John and Meredith Bergman, were deeply evangelistic and rejected “open membership.” Leaders from Christian Churches/Churches of Christ such as Ed Benoit and E. G. Hansell were preachers as well as provincial and federal politicians, and they generated deep and abiding interests in the social implications of the gospel. Moderates like Melvin Breakenridge, Owen Still, Boyd Lammiman, and George Chapman did not appreciate “labels.” They advocated and practiced the principle that the “restoration project” included the New Testament “spirit” and “fruits,” especially “speaking the truth in love,” whether to believers or non-believers. 

A second reason for the muting of division was the cooperative pragmatism of evangelistic efforts. The impetus for pragmatic evangelism that dominated the first seventy and the last thirty years of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Western Canada actually created fellowship. Whether sponsored by local initiatives or by provincial, national, or international agencies, evangelism has been a shared project, regardless of method. In his musing about why the Movement in Canada had not grown as fast as her American counterpart, Reuben Butchart suggests that in America “the Reformation and the Plea for New Testament Christianity was turned into a hard and fast legality, about the methods of the work, rather than the work itself.” For most of her history, the Movement in Western Canada has been spared this tendency. 

Third, the experience of nonsectarian fellowship among young people mitigated potential tensions. Camps, retreats, and conferences have been a forum for this experience. Of particular note is the unique Prairie Young People’s Association, established in 1928 as a concurrent conference of the Alberta Christian Missionary Society. It provided for rich, nonsectarian fellowship, developed by young people, for young people. Recent semi-annual conferences have hosted 500 youth traveling vast distances across the West. Similarly, Youth Alive in Christ provides summer ministry opportunities for teams of four or five young adults to serve churches and camps in Western Canada, Ontario, and Montana, where local resources are limited. This was initiated in 1972 by Gordon Fraser and Rick Rehn and is now managed by Alberta Bible College. 

Fourth, the Church of Christ Development Corporation has played a conciliatory role. Established in 1958 by John Bergman in Edmonton, it is a financial arm of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Canada, providing friendly terms and competitive rates for the purchase and development of church property. Millions of dollars have been available for any qualifying Canadian project in any stream of the Movement, and this has made possible significant church and parachurch development. 

3.8. Editors and Other Directional Influence in the West 

In other times and places, the “editor-bishops,” as historian W. T. Moore called them, played a dominant role in determining the direction of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Early in the development of the churches in Western Canada this was the case as well. M. B. Ryan was a regular contributor to the Christian Standard, the Christian-Evangelist, and the Canadian Disciple, serving as a contributing editor of the latter. The first periodical to be published in the Canadian West was The Alberta Christian in 1931, by C. H. Phillips. In 1936 The Gospel Herald began publication in Radville, Saskatchewan, by Robert Sinclair, and later, J. C. Bailey. From 1953 to the present it has been circulated from Beamsville, Ontario, with Eugene Perry being the dominant voice. In 1941 Phillips merged the Alberta Christian with the Christian Chronicle under the name of the latter, designed to serve both the interests of Alberta Bible College and the churches. This periodical ceased publication in 1949. In 1950 Melvin Breakenridge, Principal of Alberta Bible College, commenced publication of the Evangel. It has continued to the present under E. G. Hansell, James Chapman, Boyd Lammiman, and Ronald Fraser. James Chapman of Vulcan, Alberta, published The Christian Harbinger from 1949 to 1955. In Saskatchewan Alvin Jennings published the Saskatoon Star, and Clinton Brazle published Living Stones from Weyburn. Ed and Mary Benoit began The Christian Compass while serving in Yellowgrass, Saskatchewan, in 1948. It was subsumed in 1967 when Don Lewis of Vernon, British Columbia, published the Western Christian, which in 1976 merged with the Canadian Christian Harbinger, which had been published in Toronto for several years. It ceased publication in 1989, when Lewis returned to Joplin, Missouri. Since 1980 Church of Christ women have published Sister Triangle. 

Voices other than those of local editors have also been influential in Western Canada. The Christian Standard and The Disciple have circulated widely, as did the Mission Messenger, edited by W. Carl Ketcherside and Leroy Garrett of the Churches of Christ. (The ecumenical spirit of the latter found fertile ground in Western Canada, in all three streams of the Movement.) From 1976 until 1996, the weekly To You with Love television broadcast, first aired locally in Calgary, and then nationally, was a directional voice for at least the constituents of Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in the West, bringing focus and energy to the task of evangelism. Its host was R. Allan Dunbar, minister of the Cambrian Heights Church of Christ. Dunbar also pioneered an unapologetic participation in the broader Christian community, working within and outside the Movement to draw Christians together in the evangelistic task. His involvement with the Billy Graham School of Evangelism, nomination as one of the three most influential Calgarians of the twentieth century, and his current role as Executive Director of the North American Christian Convention underscore his broad reception and influence. 

3.9. The Twentieth Century and Beyond 

At the end of the twentieth century there were eighty-four churches (fifty-one Churches of Christ, six Disciples of Christ, and twenty-seven Christian Churches/Churches of Christ) in Western Canada, with a combined membership of about 6,400, of which 3,036 were in Churches of Christ. Perhaps the most significant trends have been the following. First is the emergence of urban congregations of all three streams of the Movement, including twelve larger (200-plus), multiple-staffed churches. A second trend is the continuing struggle for identity. Among Christian Churches/Churches of Christ and some Churches of Christ it has been a struggle of identity within mainstream evangelicalism. Among some Churches of Christ, the struggle has been within the broader Stone-Campbell fellowship. The identity crisis has been felt as well among “paired” Disciples with the United Church of Canada. Among all streams of the Movement the struggle for identity goes on as interrelationships are renegotiated in the context of decreasing sectarianism and increasing evangelistic opportunity. A third trend is the decline of the Disciples of Christ. A fourth is the developing indigenous character facilitated both by Western Canadian Christian higher education in developing leaders and a growing loss of connection to eastern and American roots. A fifth trend is a decreasing leadership drain to the United States, as churches become self-supporting. A sixth and final trend is the increased partnering in ministry opportunities, including church planting. The hosting of the World Convention of the Churches of Christ in Calgary in 1996 was both boosted by, and a boost to, such cooperative venture. 

4. The Movement in Canada at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century 

At the beginning of the twenty-first century there are 222 congregations, with a combined membership of about 15,300 people, in the Stone-Campbell Movement in Canada. The history of the Movement has unfolded with unique influences and diverse trajectories. The dominant, early, and lingering influence has been that of the Scotch Baptists, with the influence of Stone and Campbell as mediated by Americans coming later. There is a continuing search for identity in all three streams, and there are unfolding relationships, typical of a “movement” resisting denominational consolidation. There is much hope across Canada that the kingdom has much to gain by embracing the mission that unites the churches of the Stone-Campbell heritage. 

See also Alberta Bible College; Christian Connection; Haldane, Robert, and James Alexander Haldane; Maritime Christian College; McLean, Archibald; Western Christian College 

BIBLIOGRAPHY (1) The Canadian Maritimes: Reuben Butchart, The Disciples of Christ in Canada since 1830 (1948) • W. H. Harding, Beginnings of Churches of Christ in the Maritimes (1939) • Stewart Lewis, “The Scotch Baptist Influence on the Christian Churches of the Maritimes” (unpublished M.A. thesis, Cincinnati Bible Seminary, 1984) • Shirley L. Muir, Disciples in Canada (1966) • Robert E. Shaw, Historical Sketch, 1831-1956: Disciples of Christ North Street Christian Church, Halifax (c. 1956) • Harley Walker, Milton Church of Christ (Disciples of Christ) 1934-1900 (1986). 

(2) Ontario: Joseph Ash, Reminiscences: History of the Rise and Progress of Our Cause in Canada (1998) • Reuben Butchart, The Disciples of Christ in Canada since 1830 (1949) • Claude E. Cox, ed., The Campbell-Stone Movement in Ontario (1995) • Geoffrey H. Ellis, “An Inquiry into the Growth of the Disciples of Christ in 19th Century Ontario” (unpublished M.T.S. thesis, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, 1993) • Eugene C. Perry, “A History of Religious Periodicals in the Restoration Movement in Canada” (unpublished M.A. thesis, Pepperdine University, 1971). 

(3) Western Canada: Don Albert, “Church Planting Theory in British Columbia” (unpublished paper, Alberta Bible College Archives, 2003) • Doug Barrie, “A History of the Christian Church and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Alberta” (unpublished M.A. thesis, Lincoln Christian Seminary, 1975) • Melvin Breakenridge, “The Story of Alberta Bible College: 50th Anniversary Presentation” (Alberta Bible College Archives, 1982) • Reuben Butchart, A Flame of the Lord’s Kindling (1933) • Reuben Butchart, History of the Disciples of Christ in Canada Since 1830 (1949) • Canadian Christian Harbinger (periodical) • The Canadian Disciple (periodical) • The Christian Compass (periodical, Alberta Bible College Archives) • Gospel Herald (periodical) • Jim Hawkins, “The Churches of Christ in British Columbia” (unpublished paper, Alberta Bible College Archives, 2002) • M. P. Hayden, “Diaries” (unpublished, Alberta Bible College Archives) • Boyd L. Lammiman, “Joy Comes in the Morning: Alberta Bible College 60th Anniversary Publication” (Alberta Bible College Library, 1992) • Minutes of the Alberta Christian Missionary Society (Alberta Bible College Archives) • Mary Muirhead, “A Cappella Churches on the Prairies” (unpublished paper, Alberta Bible College Archives, 2003) • Bob Parker, “Breaking Down Barriers: Presentation to the Western Canadian Christian Convention” (unpublished paper, Alberta Bible College Archives, 1999). 

RONALD A. FRASER, STEWART J. LEWIS, and CLAUDE COX

This entry, written by Ronald A. Fraser, Stewart J. Lewis, and Claude Cox, was originally published in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Edited by Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pages 151-163. Republished with permission.