Fonds - Superintendent of Home Missions fonds

The Superintendents were representatives of the national Board of Home Missions and worked in various conferences across Canada. Their duties, in cooperation with the presbyteries, included supervision of all aid-receiving missions and charges, the oversight of an annual fund-raising campaign, and the organization of new pastoral charges and mission fields. The emphasis in British Columbia was on Japanese and Native Indian missions, the coastal marine missions, and hospital work. For the period immediately following church union, British Columbia missions received a large share of all Home Missions grants, and the British Columbia Conference had a correspondingly large staff, with three Superintendents at the time of union. There were severe cutbacks during the depression, and this number was reduced to one by 1939, William Percy Bunt. He served from 1939 until his retirement in 1958, and was succeeded by Robert W. Henderson in 1959, with R.M. Warne serving part-time as a Superintendent as well. Lawrence G. Sieber succeeded Henderson in 1963, and served until the dissolution of the post, together with the Board of Home Missions, in 1972. In 1953 the responsibility for church extension in the metropolitan area was transferred to the Metropolitan Council for Church Extension. In the 1960s and 1970s a number of other administrative changes affecting the Superintendency also took place. In 1969 the new Metropolitan Council for the United Church of Canada in the Lower Mainland assumed responsibility for mission work in that area, and in the same year the first Native Affairs Consultant was appointed, and the first Presbytery Officer was appointed to serve the Kamloops-Okanagan and Kootenay Presbyteries. The Board of Home Missions and the Home Missions Superintendents were succeeded by the Division of Mission in Canada in 1972.