the religious and moral life of Western Canada is no doubt to be found in the mixture of races and the resultant intermarriages. Almost every race and sect is represented. There are about eighty different religions, including many eccentric and obscure sects such as "Daniel's Band," "Doukhobors," and "Holy Rollers." According to the census of 1916 the Christian churches in Saskatchewan are numerically strong in the following order: Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, Lutheran, Greek Church, Baptist. The proportion of Anglicans has probably increased since then.

In 1910 the Archbishop of Rupertsland appealed to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to send out clergy to attend to the needs of the numerous British settlers who were pouring into the country. (Between 1900 and 1920 one million two hundred and fifty thousand persons have emigrated from Great Britain to Canada.) The Archbishops' Western Canada Fund was the answer to this appeal. The cause interested me extremely, and I became one of the collectors for the diocese of Carlisle. This diocese raised £3,000 and built St. Cuthbert's Hostel in Regina, and later raised another £1,000 towards the £50,000 needed for the endowment of the Western Canada missions.

Three missions were started by the Fund in Edmonton, Southern Alberta, and Saskatchewan respectively, but we are only concerned with the latter. In this province many small towns had sprung up owing to the great influx of immigrants (mostly British) and to the rapid railway construction, while the surrounding prairie was dotted with isolated farms and hamlets. It was with the special needs of these people that the Regina Railway Mission had to deal. Accordingly, several clergy and laymen went out from England, made the hostel at Regina their headquarters, and visited the surrounding country. They lived in one-roomed shacks, doing their own "chores," and often driving about eighty miles on a Sunday in order to take four services a day. They returned to the hostel once a quarter for spiritual refreshment, rest, and discussion of their work with the head of the Mission and with each other.

Meanwhile, a pioneer movement was on foot in the Old Country. At St. Christopher's College, Blackheath, a specialised training in the matter and method of religious education had been inaugurated for women prepared to undertake this branch of social service. I was asked to become Diocesan Sunday School Organiser for the diocese of Carlisle, and went to train at St. Christopher's in 1914. There I met Miss Aylmer Bosanquet and Miss Nona Clarke, and was naturally very interested to find that these new acquaintances were anxious to go out to Regina and do Sunday-school work in connection with the Railway Mission. A firm friendship resulted from this common interest.

Aylmer Bosanquet's plan was to go out with Nona Clarke and live on the prairie, working amongst the children and supplementing the work of the clergy in any other possible way. She proposed to finance the expedition entirely herself. At first the Secretary for the Archbishops' Western Canada Fund was very dubious about accepting her generous offer, having been out in Canada himself, and knowing that life in a prairie shack is exceedingly hard for gently nurtured women. But Aylmer Bosanquet was so urgent that at last she won the day, and she and Nona Clarke went out to Regina in 1915. They established themselves at Kenaston, where they lived in a three-roomed shack and did all their own work, even to the grooming of the buggy horses.

The women missioners went up to Regina once a quarter, when the clergy and laymen met to discuss their work. They brought valuable contributions to the matter in hand. They had found great ignorance amongst the children, some of whom did not even know the Lord's Prayer. At their first Christmas they found several children who had never heard of the birth of Christ. All that the holy season meant to them was contained in the nursery legend of Father Christmas.

This ignorance is largely due to there being no Scripture teaching in the public elementary schools, although there is a clause in the Saskatchewan Education Act which says that the last half-hour of every day may be given to Scripture teaching if the trustees are agreed. Unfortunately, they seldom do agree in this matter, as they usually belong to different religious bodies. Nor is there any religious teaching in the collegiate schools (which correspond with English high schools), even in Regina, the capital of the province. The following answer was given by a collegiate girl in a secular examination: "When William the Conqueror went to England he found no code of laws, and so he drew up the Ten Commandments."

After about four years of strenuous work, Aylmer Bosanquet fell ill, and was obliged to go into a nursing home at Toronto for a serious operation. In the quiet time of convalescence her thoughts were busy with the work so dear to her, and she began to consider the problem of the many children in the enormous diocese of Qu'Appelle, who had no Sunday school, and who could not be reached by rail or buggy from the existing centres. She felt that the future of the Anglican Church in Canada depended upon the religious training of these children, and an idea came to her whereby these isolated places might be reached. Her plan was that trained women should go out on to the prairie, two and two, in caravans during the season when the trails are passable. They would gather the children together and start Sunday schools, training teachers to carry them on. In the winter they would return to some central town, whence they would keep in touch with the quite isolated children by means of the Sunday School by post. They would also lecture locally and give demonstration lessons.

Many of these trained women would be needed if all the children on the prairie were to be reached. It would be necessary at first to recruit from England, but later it might be possible to develop a movement already started, but which had had to be temporarily abandoned for lack of a suitable head—namely, a training college for the Dominion of Canada on the lines of St. Christopher's, Blackheath.

Aylmer Bosanquet wrote to me describing her new plan. She was very anxious to see it in operation, for the diocese of Qu'Appelle alone covers 92,000 square miles (about twice the size of England), and two women, though with the best will in the world, could do comparatively little in that immense area.

The project of caravanning on the prairie in the interests of religious education appealed to me very strongly, and as Aylmer Bosanquet soon afterwards came home to England to recuperate, we were able to discuss the matter together. Her idea was to have a horse caravan which should be moved on from place to place by the farmers. But as I have lived all my life in an agricultural district, I knew the difficulties consequent on wanting the use of farm horses in seed-time and harvest—the very seasons when the trails are open—and I also knew that horses could never cover the necessary distances. In my own diocesan work, which took me to little out-of-the-way villages among the fells of Cumberland and Westmorland, I had found it necessary to use a car, and I therefore felt it would be best to have a motor caravan.

It would be worse than useless to take a motor-car on to the rough prairie trails unless one had had long driving experience and done a considerable amount of running repairs. To learn to drive one year and to go out the next would probably mean finding yourself in a tight corner. As I had been allowed to use our cars throughout the War, in connection with my Sunday school work and a V.A.D. hospital, I had fortunately gained a good deal of practical experience, especially as it was necessary to drive in all weathers, day and night, over the steep hills of the Lake District. When