CANADA'S PRIMATE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 131, 1 December 1930, Page 9

CANADA'S PRIMATE

BEQUESTS TO EETIBE

PLACE FOR YOUNGER MAN

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVEK, 2nd November.' The Primate of Canada, Archbishop Matheson, is about to retire after spending all his 78 years in "Western Canada, 55 as a priest, 27 as Bishop, and 21 as Primate. He retires at his own request, to make way for a younger man, under whom, he says, ho will serve as Bishop. The last condition best describes the reason for Archbishop Mathoson's success throughout his ministry. Civil and ecclesiastical honours have never, disguised his kindly, democratic temperament. His broad Catholicism, especially the warmth of his heart toward the ancient church of Aul Scotia, to which the other members of his family belong, are his heritage from that band of stalwart Highlanders sent out by Lord Selkirk in 1813 to form the nucleus of a colony on the banks of the Ked Eivor, where Winnipeg now is. Dr. Matheson is the best-known churchman west of the Great Lakes. He is a big man in stature, outlook, and achievement. Most of the noted men of the Anglican Church in Western Canada have been, by blood and training, typically Scotch —Anderson Machray, Maclean, and Matheson. Ho has had the longest and most unique experience of all. His mother, daughter of a fur trader, died shor-tly after he was born. His father's people were toughgrained Scots. At the age of fourteen, he won a theological scholarship at St. John's College, where. he rose to be headmaster. His first work was in charge of a team of farm oxen on the trailless prairie. Throughout his later life, when his labours took him all over the West, and north to the Arctic,- he never passed a fine team of farm horses without running his hand over them appraisingly. CLOSE TOUCH WITH PEOPLE. In the stirring days of the Kiel Kebellion, young Matheson acted as dispatch bearer between Donald Smith (afterwards Lord Strathcona), whose headquarters were at Tort Garry, and Eiel. On the day Confederation was inaugurated, Ist July, 1867, he was working on a farm. "I recall the event was marked by the arrival of a huge contingent from the South—not of American tourists but of grasshoppers. A diary kept by a friend on a neighbouring farm at the time omitted any i reference to Confederation but recorded the daily movements of the grasshoppers." One of the best raconteurs in; Western Canada, the Archbishop, who always wore a long beard, often recalled the story of the teacher who showed his photograph to lier scholars and asked who it was. He was identified as Moses, Noah, and Santa, Claus. The teacher got the satisfaction, at least, of knowing that all three were eminent men, the greatest, alas, being Santa Claus. Thoughout his ministry, Archbishop Matheson was active in aiding the developement of the spiritual and cultural welfare of- his people. Their problems he made his own. The men and women who turned the wilderness of the prairie into a huge wheat field always felt the soothing'influence of his helpful, kindly, sympathetic nature. No man, in any walk of life, can claim closer acquaintance than he with the building up of the Canadian West into a. new Empire, into which the best traditions of the Britisher were deeply planted.