Good Intentions Gone Awry

Unlike most missionary scholarship that focuses on male missionaries, "Good Intentions Gone Awry" chronicles the experience of a missionary wife. It is based on the letters that Emma Crosby, wife of the well-known Methodist missionary Thomas Crosby, wrote to her family and others in Cobourg, Ontario, while she lived at Fort Simpson, near present-day Prince Rupert. Crosby's letters to her mother are at the heart of this volume. Her correspondence begins just prior to her meeting the missionary suitor who would become her husband. The exchange of letters continued from 1874 until 1881, when her mother passed away. The deaths of her mother and then of her father five years later slowed her letters to her family to a trickle. "Good Intentions Gone Awry" is a fascinating collection. Crosby, besides being a prolific letter-writer, was well-educated and an informative writer. Her letters shed light on a particular era and bear witness to the contribution of missionary wives. They show that mission work was something much more complex than simple tales of conversion by men invested in Christianity. Multiple participants shaped the missionary enterprise, each of them acting on their own motivations with consequences that no one would have anticipated. This book is a valuable contribution to Canadian history and will appeal to readers in women's, Canadian, Native, and religious studies, as well as those interested in missiology in the Canadian West.

ISBN 0774812702   Pages 368 ISBN13 9780774812702 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher University of British Columbia Press   Weight (grammes) 630 Imprint University of British Columbia Press   Published in Vancouver Format Hardback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 15 Jul 2006   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress 2006283582   Spine width (mm) 26 DEWEY 971.103092   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

Good Intentions Gone Awry offers insight into the previously underemphasized role of women in all aspects of missionary life - both as an exploration of the gendered practices within the missionary project that regimented Emma Crosby's life and the results of the imposition of such practices on Aboriginal girls. The authors... offer interpretative tools to make sense of [Emma] within her times without excusing her complacency in the colonialism inherent to Aboriginal missions.

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