Taissumani, April 13

The former whaling station at Blacklead Island.

Julian William Bilby was born in England in 1871, the son of a schoolmaster. Little is known of his childhood. He worked as a cabinet-maker before joining the Church Missionary Society in 1895, and went out to Blacklead Island in the Canadian Arctic three years later.

Bilby was unusual for a missionary, constantly at odds with the mission office in London, and openly critical of the mission’s dependence on the Scottish whalers, who also ran a station at Blacklead.

CMS could not afford to charter its own ships, and so the missionaries had to travel to and from the Arctic on the whaling vessels. Others took this as a signal that the missionaries should be muted in their criticism of the whalers, many of whom had relationships with Inuit women despite their traditional marriages to women back home.

But Bilby was outspokenly critical of the whalers.

He had first arrived at the mission in 1898, four years after Edmund James Peck had established it. Peck was there, half-way through his second stint at the mission, when Bilby arrived. So was another missionary who would later court controversy, Charles Sampson.

Peck was a veteran of Arctic service, having laboured earlier in northern Quebec. Fluent in Inuktitut, he was an ideal mentor for the young men.

The following summer, Peck left for England, leaving Bilby and Sampson alone at Blacklead. He returned to his post in 1900 and Sampson left that summer. Bilby remained for another year with Peck before taking furlough in England.

In 1902 Bilby returned to Blacklead while Peck again went to England for one year. Bilby remained there this time for three years.

Peck was also unusual among CMS clergymen in advocating that missionaries should be free to marry native women. He was happily married to an English woman who had been with him in Quebec, but remained in England during his four stints at Blacklead.

But he felt that adopting a liberal policy of allowing young missionaries to “marry local” was the only way that the church would be able to recruit and retain men at the society’s far-flung posts throughout the world.

Of course, what he had in mind were church-sanctioned marriages performed by ordained clergymen. He had not anticipated that a missionary might take an Inuit woman as a wife through local custom marriage.

Yet, apparently, that is exactly what Bilby did at some point before his departure for England in 1905. Almost thirty years ago Qatsuq Evic, an elderly woman in Pangnirtung, recounted that Bilby, whom she remembered as being not as popular as Peck or as Greenshield (who arrived in 1901), “was the only one who married while in Cumberland Sound.”

The object of his affections was Annie Sikuliaq, the sister of Tulugarjuaq, a native catechist whom Peck had trained and who was one of the stalwart supporters of the new faith that was replacing traditional beliefs in the sound.

Tulugarjuaq was an influential man. He had converted to Christianity in February 1902 and was appointed the first native teacher at Blacklead in November of the following year. The fact that Bilby lived with his sister can probably be taken to mean that Tulugarjuaq sanctioned the relationship.

But Bilby left Blacklead in the summer of 1905. Was this at the suggestion of Peck? Or of the officials at CMS headquarters? The written record is silent on the reasons. Perhaps it was simply time for a furlough.

The next summer, it was the turn of Rev. E. W. T. Greenshield to go to England for a holiday at the end of his second term on Blacklead. He travelled on the Dutch-registered vessel, Jantina Agatha, which Crawford Noble, whaling station owner, had chartered that year. Its destination was Aberdeen.

But it was not Greenshield’s own arrival that caused a stir in the Granite City. It was his companion. For Greenshield was escorting Annie Sikuliaq (mission records call her Sikkooleak) to join her lover in England.

Earlier that year, Bilby had resigned from CMS. The society had probably asked for his resignation in light of his relationship with Annie. What they thought of Greenshield’s agreement to escort her to Scotland is not recorded.

Continued next week.

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.