B. G. (Benjamin Gottlieb) Kohlmeister

Benjamin Gottlieb Kohlmeister was a Moravian missionary and writer associated with the Labrador mission. According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, he was born on February 6, 1756, in Reisen (now Rydzyna, Poland), came from a modest family, trained as a cabinet-maker, and later joined the Moravian church after contact with a congregation in Dresden.

He was sent to Labrador in 1790 and spent years at Moravian stations including Okak and Hopedale. There he learned Inuktitut, worked as a teacher and trader, and even served as a doctor. The same source credits him with helping lead a major religious revival in Hopedale in the early 1800s and later taking part in plans to extend Moravian work farther north and west.

Kohlmeister is remembered today chiefly for Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, published in London in 1814 and written with fellow missionary George Kmoch. The book records their 1811 expedition from Okak toward Ungava Bay and the Koksoak River, offering an early printed account of travel, missionary purpose, and life in the eastern Canadian Arctic.