Truth and Reconciliation

Sitting Bull's Camp

I would like to offer for your interest the following account from the autobiography of The Rev Canon P.L. Spencer, of his trip to the Residential Schools across Canada in 1892. This has impact upon the ongoing Truth and Reconciliation process in Ottawa Canada. I have added a number of lantern slide pictures from this period to illustrate the text.

Canon Spencer emigrated with his family from England to Hamilton, Ontario as an eight year old boy in 1853 and became one of the five founding clergy of the Diocese of Niagara. He had a great interest in photography and left a legacy of over 2300 glass lantern slides (many of them hand painted) of his visits and experiences all over the world. He became a popular speaker and writer and gave lectures before the advent of cinema on topics such as "Ship and Shanty in the Early 50's", "Olden Days", and "Around the World in an Hour and a Half" illustrated by these same magic lantern slides. He served in Parishes for over half a century in Niagara Diocese before passing away on May 25th 1932 at the age of eighty six. (see his biography at http://www.tellout.com/finalwebsite/biography.htm)

Passenger and Conductor

It is not often that we can read the actual accounts, hear the thoughts and see pictures of the Residential Schools and native peoples in Canada from 118 years ago. These extracts are offered without comment on my part, but it seems to me that they do illustrate the deep concern that Canon Spencer and other supporters in England had for native people in the Canadian mission field at that time. Here is a partial transcription of Canon Spencer's autobiography, (p. 115-122) provided courtesy of his family.

"In 1892, I was able to carry into effect a long-cherished desire to visit my native land (England). Having by correspondence with the venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel learned that I could be useful in England. I resolved to make a journey through the prairie region and go as far as the coast of British Columbia in order to see with my own eyes the chief mission establishments situated within convenient reach of a passenger traveling by the then slow trans-continental, The Canadian Pacific Railway.

"Who is afraid?"

"Having explained my object to the officials of that great railway corporation, I obtained a remarkably favorable concession, the favor enabling me to travel at a minimum cost and allowing me to break the journey at any desired point. At several places, I gave a lantern lecture on Eastern Canada. I also took a fairly large number of photographs of natural scenery, mission-buildings,  men, women and children, besides some views of Chinese life and worship."

"Among the places to which I gave attention were: Winnipeg and St. Peter's Reserve, Broadview and Grenfell villages, Crooked Lake Reserve, Fort Qu'Appelle, and the Touch Wood Hills Reserves, Calgary City and the Sarcee and Black Foot reserve, Lytton with its Christian Indian settlement, Vancouver and Victoria, each with its Chinese mission and Nanaimo, my farthest point of observation, with its relic of a Hudson' Bay Fort and its coal-mines of untold value."

Swift Current Blanket Shawls

"In Broadview I met "old auntie", a well-known Indian woman of many summers. How old she was could only be guessed, but an approximation of her age was afforded by the fact that she had a daughter who was known to be 80 years old.

"... A few days afterwards when the C.P.R. train was waiting at Swift Current, I saw on the station platform several Indian women engaged in the mercantile pursuit of exchanging highly polished Buffalo horns for their equivalent in silver coins,

"Lest I forget, I will here state that when returning from the coast a fortnight later, I made a closer acquaintance of the same buffalo horns vendors and purchased from them a pair of the prairie souvenirs, thus showing my good-will."

Elder

The Lantern Slide Photographs described here and many others can be viewed in the HiVu Photos Gallery in my collection (100 First Nations pictures displayed) at http://www.tellout.com/ and go to HiVu Photos Gallery. The titles, by the way, are the exact ones written on the magic lantern glass slides by Canon Spencer himself, and I have not edited the autobiographical account in any way, only to modernize some of the quaint English terms no longer in use and strange views expressed as typical of the Victorian era. I wanted it to be as authentic as possible. I hope that this is both enlightening and helpful to us all in our own quest for truth and reconciliation.

That's what I think anyway.

Rev Ron

Time and Eternity

Someone should invent a "Lifetime Clock" that begins on the day you take your first breath (or maybe the day you were conceived in the womb) and stops at the second you take your last breath. At any moment, on my hypethetical Lifetime Clock, you would be able to read exactly how old you were in years, months, days, hours, minutes and even seconds. I googled "lifetime clock" and discovered there is such a thing, a Life Clock, (see the picture at right) with this comment added,

"There's nothing more depressing than seeing your entire lifetime condensed down into something as small and contained as a clock." (Life Clock on Gizmodo)

With an insight into time, the LORD God told a youthful Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart..." (Jeremiah 1.5 NIV) Before we were even born, God took a note of each one of us and decided what we were going to be!

I was reading Christopher Dewdney's interesting book about time called "Soul of the World" (from Harper Collins) and was thinking about time as a kind of fourth dimension. You don't notice that it is gradually moving on, tick by tick, until you come back from a holiday. Everything seems to be the same in the house until you see an apple left on the counter top by mistake three weeks before. It was perfect when you left it but now is shrunken and wizzened. In fact, everything around the house has changed too, even minutely, but only the apple shows it.

The great hymn writer, Isaac Watts, (1678 - 1727) captured this thought in the fourth verse of his famous hymn, "O God, our help in ages past..." which he wrote as a paraphrase of Psalm 90. "Time like an ever rolling stream, Bears all its sons away, They fly forgotten as a dream, Dies at the opening day." The ever rolling stream of time bears all sons and daughters away and stops for nothing and no one. Like a dream, which is so real while we are asleep, it evaporates and slips our memory when we wake.

Time has to be set in its context of eternity. The Creation is the beginning of time and the New Heaven and New Earth is its close but before and beyond that there is eternity. Jesus is called the Alpha and the Omega (the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet) because he was in eternity before the Creation and will be in eternity once time is no more. The Beginning and the End, we speak about, does not refer to the period of time only but way before and way beyond that in eternity.

I remember taking relatives from England to Niagara Falls and looking over the wall, as we all do, at the tremendous amount of water churning over the edge of the Falls. Like time, nothing can stop it, it just keeps on going. Also at that moment, the skin on my hand is imperceptibly flaking off, oh so gently. Time moves on and we all change.

There was one moment for me when time stood still. I was on a motorcycle trip to Birmingham from Liverpool on a very wet September evening. Time stopped for an instant. God pushed his finger through the curtain of eternity into my time and asked, "Why did Jesus die on the cross?" Before I could answer, "for me" God was gone."From everlasting to everlasting you are God." (Psalm 90.2)

That's what I think, anyhow.

Rev Ron

Florence Nightingale - the "Lady with the Lamp"

Tuesday, the 12th. of May is the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, who was called in her day, "The Lady with the Lamp." "The lamp" title comes from the fact that in the army hospital, she allowed no other nurse on the wards after 8 p.m. and at night patrolled the injured soldiers' beds with an oil lamp in hand. She is remembered today for her work in the establishment of the nursing profession as we know it, largely because of her strong and dedicated Christian commitment. The title "Lady of the Lamp" was the "symbol of selfless, caring, tireless service" (1) that she pursued.

This coming week in Peterborough is known as "Nursing Week." I remember with gratitude the many health professionals including nurses who have together on many occasions given me "the gift of good health." I also think of the sadness felt when talking with a colonoscopy nurse one day to discover that she had three jobs to make ends meet ie half time at one hospital, another half time at a second hospital and a third shift at a nursing home. Why can't we get enough nurses? This is called lack of job security. It is a modern curse.

Back to Florence Nightingale. Most people do not know that after only 8 months of basic training in 1853, she persuaded a team of 38 nurses and auxiliaries of whom 10 were Roman Catholic, 8 Church of England, 6 from the St John Institute and 14 recruited from hospitals to go with her in 1854 to the Crimean War in Turkey. In the oil painting at right, called "Mission of Mercy," she is shown tending an injured man near the gate of the military hospital in Scutari in 1856. (2)

In those days, hospitals were often dark and dirty and the nurses untrained. Nurses were regarded with little more respect than prostitutes and women were resented in the hospitals of the day. Florence was known for her "dislike of the lack of opportunities for women." Her mother begged her not to go to the Crimea, but she was determined. She had a call to serve and refused to marry, much to her parents anguish. Wounded soldiers in the Crimea were uncared for - but she had to do what she could to help them.

Florence had been born on the 12th May in 1820 to a wealthy English family while her parents were on a trip to Florence in Italy. She grew up in the family home, Embley House, in Hampshire, England (shown at right). In 1837, she "experienced a Christian divine calling." Later at Thebes, she wrote of "being called to God." A week later her diary reads, "God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for him alone without recognition." (3)

Florence served faithfully in the Crimea, but then was confined to her home and bedridden for the second half of her life with what we call today, "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome." Even as an invalid she influenced nursing standards. She changed British military medical care, dramatically lowered mortality rates, spearheaded the first Visiting Nurse Association in 1860 and set up model nursing schools. She was a Pioneer of the Red Cross Movement and an advisor to both the United States Government for the care of wounded civil war soldiers and to the Franco-Prussian war. Though confined to her bed, she continued to work for the betterment of society and the nursing profession in particular. She died suddenly on the 13th August 1910 at the age of Ninety. She had refused an offer of a ceremonial burial in St Paul's Cathedral, London and was laid to rest in her home parish in East Wellow. (shown at right)

Her dedication reminds me of the words of Etienne de Grellet,

"I shall pass through this life but once.  Any good therefore, that I can do Or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, Let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, For I shall not pass this way again.

The writer to the Hebrews adds,

"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers." (4) The nursing profession and every nurse deserves and is entitled to every respect and support for the wonderful work that they do. Thank you to each one and especially to Florence Nightingale.

That's what I think anyway,

Rev Ron

(1) Maryka Ford R.E.S.C.I.N.D. Inc. (2) "Florence Nightingale receiving the wounded at Scutary 1856" by Jerry Barrett 1824-1906 copyright London Fine Art Society. (3) Quoted by Edward Chaney in "Egypt in England and America - The Cultural Memories of Religion, Royalty and Revolution." (4) Hebrews 13:2