Bishop Isaac O. Stringer

Stringer attended University College and Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto. In 1882, Isaac met the Venerable William Day Reeve who addressed a Wycliffe College Missionary Society meeting and spoke of the needs and possibilities in working as a missionary in the Mackenzie River valley. Isaac’s friend, Tom Marsh, was going to volunteer and Isaac decided to do so as well.

 

Stringer stayed with Archdeacon McDonald at Fort McPherson while he got acclimatized, learned a bit of the Gwich’in and Inuvialuit languages, and visited the Mackenzie Delta. In May 1893, Rev. Stringer visited Herschel Island with his Inuvialuit guide Ooblonk. He found  the southern whaling boats Balaena, Grampus, Newport and Narwhal frozen into Pauline Cove. Stringer returned to Herschel Island five times between November 1893 and spring 1895. 

 

Stringer left Herschel in September 1895 and took his furlough in Ontario where he married his fiancée Sadie. In May 1896, he and Sadie and Sadie’s uncle William Dobbs Young started back north. The Stringer’s first child, Rowena, was born at Fort McPherson. The whalers and the Inuvialuit both supported a permanent mission on Herschel so in August 1897 the Stringers returned to Herschel to spend the next four years there. In anticipation, Stringer had studied some dentistry and medicine while he was on furlough. The Stringers’ second child was born on the island in May 1900.

 

In 1903, Stringer was advised not to return to the arctic due to an eye condition resulting from snow blindness, so the family moved to Whitehorse in the fall and their third child was born there. In 1905, Stringer became the second Bishop of Selkirk and, after a trip to Toronto, he and Sadie went to England to apply for more money from the Church Missionary Society. In 1907, the Stringers moved to Dawson and that became the home of the re-named Diocese of Yukon.

 

In 1909, Stringer visited missions along the Mackenzie and Herschel Island before stopping at Fort McPherson to prepare a trip further west to Fort Yukon and Dawson. The bishop left McPherson with lay missionaries Charles Johnson and W.H. Fry and guides Enoch Moses and Joseph Vittrekwa. They lost a week of travel time when Enoch fell ill and had to be escorted back to McPherson. It was getting cold by September 20th when the party reached Divide Lake and the boat supplies were transported halfway over the mountains. Stringer and Johnson carried on alone from this point. They were slow in travelling and ice was forming on the creek, so they decided to return to McPherson by taking what looked like the shortest way back, over the mountains instead of on the trail. They hoped to resupply at Lapierre House and cached supplies along the way to lighten their load but instead they became lost on the unfamiliar route. They had a compass but forgot to compensate for magnetic north. Johnson was unskilled but managed to make what worked as snowshoes. They ran out of food and ate their hide moccasins and mukluks. They finally reached the houses of the William Vittrekwa, Charlie Cluwetsit and Andrew Cloh families on the Peel River about 20 miles upstream from Fort McPherson. Their almost fatal journey lasted 51 days and Stringer became known as the “Bishop who ate his boots.” 

 

During and after the First World War, Stringer travelled to England to assist the returning soldiers. In 1919, Stringer was back in Ontario and feeling poorly. In 1920, he established St. Paul’s Hostel in Dawson, and it opened on September 21st. In 1924, the Stringers made a tour of the Diocese. Sadie accompanied him on as many trips as she could, trying to slow down the guides who travelled too fast for her husband’s bad heart and poor vision. In 1927, she went on a thousand-mile trip they took from the Mackenzie Delta to Cambridge Bay.

 

In 1931, Stringer was named the diocesan bishop of Rupert’s Land and the metropolitan of the province and the Stringers relocated to Winnipeg. The last few years of Stringer's life were difficult ones. He was plagued by re-occurring illness and worried about the church's financial losses due to embezzlement by a trusted law firm.

 

Isaac Stringer died suddenly on the steps of his church and is buried there at St. John’s Cathedral in Winnipeg.