One of the storied characters of the Old West was John McDougall, frontiersman and missionary, who was no stranger to the pioneers of Moose Jaw.
The McDougall family was the first white family to take up permanent residence in what is now the province of Alberta.
The Rev. George McDougall, a Methodist missionary, had brought his family to western Canada in 1862 and established a mission on the North Saskatchewan River, about 70 miles east of Fort Edmonton.
At that time, George’s wife, Elizabeth Chantler McDougall,s was the only white woman between Fort Garry (now Winnipeg) and the Pacific coast.
Their eldest son, 21-year old John Chantler McDougall, was soon at home on the frontier. He was blessed with tremendous strength and the endurance necessary to survive in the wilderness.
With Aboriginal friends, he took part in the buffalo hunts, and knew what it was like to be lost on the prairie without food.
In 1863, John made a two-month, 1,000-mile trip to the Red River Settlement in present-day Manitoba to purchase supplies, along with four cows and a bull, for his father’s mission.
After a long, hazardous return journey, he wrote in his journal: “The cows were a great source of comfort to our party; they assured us of milk and butter, and if other resources failed, of beef.”
At the mission, the cows went to work to produce dairy products where none had been known before.
When the buffalo disappeared from the plains, John McDougall was the first to import cattle from American territory. He was one of the founders of the Alberta cattle industry, and his JM cattle brand was the first.
In 1873, the Rev. John McDougall, now an ordained Methodist minister, and his father, George. established a mission among the Stoney tribe at Morley, west of present-day Calgary.
It was a combined ranch-mission operation, for the two McDougalls found that ranching was the only means by which they could support their mission.
John McDougall’s first recorded visit to Moose Jaw came in 1886 while en route to Eastern Canada to begin a speaking tour.
He was accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Boyd McDougall, and three close Aboriginal friends, Stoney chief Jonas Goodstoney and Cree chiefs Samson and Pakan, who were credited with maintaining peace among their peoples during the North-West Resistance of 1885.
The McDougall party made an overnight stop at Moose Jaw and met with local Methodists in their little wooden church, which once stood on the present site of St. Mark’s on High Street East.
Mrs. John Bellamy, who was present, recalled how the unpretentious church impressed chief Samson.
“The people here ought to be good when they have such a nice church to worship in,” he told her.
Mrs. Bellamy also recalled: “The next day when they were waiting for the train to go east, Mrs. McDougall and I were talking. Someone took hold of her dress, and looking around she found it was chief Jonas Goodstoney.”
Poor Jonas, apprehensive about this trip into white man’s world, explained that he “felt safer when he held her dress.”
In 1893 during the 10th anniversary celebrations of the local Methodist church, John McDougall returned to Moose Jaw in his new role as president of the Methodist Conference.
He preached two sermons on anniversary Sunday, Nov. 5, and gave a public lecture on Monday evening.
A remarkable storyteller with enough adventures to fill several lifetimes, John McDougall recounted his travels as a peacemaker among the First Nations during the anxious days of 1870 when it was feared the Red River Rebellion might become a widespread uprising.
He told of being in the midst of the great smallpox epidemic which swept the prairies in 1870 and how he tried to induce the Aboriginals to remain out on the plains in small family groups instead of congregating as they were doing at Father Lacombe’s mission.
Such isolation saved many a life, although McDougall’s first wife Abigail and two of his sisters died as they laboured to relieve the sufferings of others.
John McDougall rounded off his visit to Moose Jaw by spending time at Welsey Methodist Church a few miles northwest of town, where the congregation was celebrating its third anniversary and he was to be their guest speaker.
“A large number drove out from Moose Jaw,” reported the local Times. “To say that the people were delighted with the lecture is putting it mildly.”
Since John McDougall had a nephew living in Moose Jaw, in all likelihood he visited here on other occasions.
The nephew, Winfred Chantler from Ontario, had settled in Moose Jaw as a young man of 27 and opened a men’s clothing store on Main Street North, and continued in business for nearly a decade.
