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Robert McDonald (1829-1913)

Robert McDonald was born at Point Douglas, Manitoba to Neil McDonald and Ann Logan. Robert attended school at the Red River Academy and then worked on his father’s farm. He went to Norway House to teach at the Methodist mission at age nineteen and, in 1850, he returned to Red River and entered the ministry. He attended St. John’s College in Winnipeg and graduated with honours. He was ordained deacon in 1852 and priest in 1853. That fall he was put in charge of the Ojibwe Islington Mission north of the Red River settlement on the Winnipeg River. He learned Anishinaabemowin, a language in the Algonquian language family, and translated the minor prophets. 

In 1862 McDonald was recruited by W. W. Kirkby and he went to join him to minister to the Gwich’in and establish a Church Missionary Society mission at Fort Yukon. To get there, McDonald travelled down the Mackenzie River, over the mountains and down the Porcupine River. He discovered the first reported gold in the Yukon River Valley in the Birch Creek district. The creek was later called Preacher Creek. McDonald arrived at Fort Yukon at the same time as the Catholic priest, Father Séquin. Father Séquin did not have many converts, as the Hudson’s Bay Company supported the Anglicans. Archdeacon McDonald followed a Church Missionary Society policy to train First Nation ministers so they could travel to the far-flung congregation. Many of these men were already shamans or religious leaders in their own culture. McDonald taught reading and writing in Gwich’in by using stories that helped his students relate to the bible parables. 

In 1864 McDonald experienced chest pains and requested a leave. He travelled to Peel River but then felt well enough to sign up for more years in the north and returned to Fort Yukon in August 1865. He credited his recovery to an Indigenous tonic made from a root he called “Toayashi” meaning “it helped cure his uncle’”. McDonald continued to suffer from chest pains, bad headaches, and catarrh but still travelled extensively. In 1869 McDonald left Lapierre House in May and travelled down the Porcupine and Yukon rivers in a birchbark canoe,

accompanied by interpreters and paddlers William Loola and Natthui. They brought McDonald to a gathering at Nuklukayet, near the mouth of the Tanana River, in mid-June. Trading was completed, but the chief of the Gwich’yaa Gwich’in, Shahnyatti, asked some to stay at the gathering and listen to McDonald. All the chiefs rose to volunteer: Kwiyate of the Tanan Gwich'in, Bikkienchatti of the Draan’jik Gwich’in, Tevisinti of the Neets’ąįį Gwich’in, and Nootlete of the Hän. McDonald taught catechism before continuing to St. Michael where he stayed for several weeks before returning to his mission. William Loola learned prayers and hymns in Gwich’in from Reverend Robert McDonald and was appointed a Christian Leader (catechist) in December of that year. 

Reverend McDonald took a furlough from the north in 1872/73. While he was in England his Gwich’in translations of the Gospels and Epistles of St. John, a portion of the prayer book, and some hymns, were published. Robert’s brother Kenneth McDonald became the lay-minister at Rampart House, Alaska while Rev. McDonald was on furlough. 

The Anglican Church had a bias towards ministers trained in England and in 1873, the relatively newly arrived William Carpenter Bompas was named the first Bishop of Selkirk, later the Diocese of Yukon. In 1875, Bompas named McDonald the Archdeacon of Mackenzie with his headquarters at Fort McPherson and McDonald moved there from Lapierre House in 1876. The posting was a strategic move to deter the Roman Catholic missionaries from moving west and gaining converts in the Yukon River drainage.  

Robert McDonald and Julia Kutug, a young Gwich’in woman, were married in 1876. He performed his own marriage instead of waiting for Bompas to do it when he visited. McDonald took another furlough in 1883. Julia went with him to Winnipeg and then returned to Fort McPherson with their youngest children. McDonald received an honorary doctorate in divinity from the University of Manitoba in 1884. His Gwich’in translations of the Book of Common Prayer and the Old and New Testaments were published in England while he was there.    

In 1904, Archdeacon McDonald retired with Julia in Winnipeg.  Julia McDonald helped her husband prepare a Gwich’in grammar and dictionary and it was published in 1911. McDonald’s journals and papers are in the Archives of the Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert’s Land at the Archives of Manitoba though his journals from 1883 through 1885 are missing while he was away from the north. McDonald Avenue in Winnipeg is named in his honour.

Robert McDonald’s legacy is his preservation of many Gwich’in words and phrases that would otherwise be lost, and his nurture of an Indigenous Christian clergy that supported an enduring Christianity among the Gwich’in and Hän in the Canadian northwest and eastern Alaska.  

See the annotated journals of Robert McDonald. 

Young Robert McDonald crop Anglican Church Synod P9314-53.jpg

Young Robert McDonald c. 1862

YA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives fonds, P9314-53

Julia McDonald and four of her nine children ca. 1900. l-r: Mary, Neil, Julia Kutug McDonald, Hugh John, and Effie. 

YA, Anglican Church of Canada General Synod Archives fonds 78/67 #91

1984_74b Robert McDonald photo OLCM.jpg

Archdeacon Robert McDonald c. 1904. (NWT Archives/Anglican Church of Canada, Diocese of the Arctic fonds N-1979-59:1)

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