WOMAN IN THE ARCTIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 185, 30 March 1932, Page 2

WOMAN IN THE ARCTIC

\ . AMONG tHE ESKIMOS iHlRTY-FiVE YEARS SPENT IN FROZEN NORTH. ARDUOUS MISSIONARY LIFE. Thirty-five years, ago a young bride set out from Kincardine (Ontario) to share with her husband the arduous life of a missionary in- the remote stretches of the Arctic. She is, writes a correspondent to the News-Chroni-cle, Mrs. I. O. Stringer, wife of the president Archbishop of Rupert's Land, and in a colourful talk before the Winnipeg Women's Canadian Club she related her experience among her Eskimo parishioners. Mrs. Stringer was the first woman to set foot on Herchel fsland. At that time the Hudson Bay Company or the mounted police had not established posts on the island. Her first home, she stated, was a one-roomed hut of sod. Later it was replaced by a house of timber, brought north from San Francisco-^a 2000-mile voyage, and it became known as Tgoopukk" — the biggest house. Seventeen years passed, Mrs. Stringer said, before the, first convert rewarded their efforts. At first she was terrified when stalwart Eskimos. with pierced lips and bedecked faces, big head-dress and shaven heads came into her house, brandishing the knives they always carried.' She soon learned, "however, that it was only curiosity that brought them. Both men and women were exceedingly clever in making vessels from horns. The womenfolk of these "Children of the Arctic," were adept at the dressmaking art. Using a queer curved- lcnife, they could fashion a garment with amazing speed. They were stickers for style, too, each garment being inset with a white fur. Worries of house-cleaning had yet to he experienced by the women of the North. The Eskimos could build an "ingloo" in an hour, which meant that when one house got uncomfortably dirty, the family moved into another. Language barriers proved an obstacle to missionary work at first, but by degrees the Eskimos attended a little school established for their benefit. Later, other "special schools" were set up on the island, where natives were being taught the rudiments of education and animal husbandry; and a determined effort was now being made to encourage them in reindeer ranehing. Mrs. Stringer did not dwell on the hardships of her life in the North, but told of her two eldest children who were born on Herschel Island, with her husband as doctor, nurse and attendant. Her son, Merschel, is a missionary doctor on the Columbia River, and her daughter (Mrs. J. Wilkinson) recently returned from India.