author
Thomas Crosby
1840–1914
A Methodist missionary and memoirist, he wrote vivid first-hand accounts of life and travel on the Pacific coast of Canada. His books bring together adventure, evangelism, and a close view of 19th-century encounters between settlers and Indigenous communities.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Pickering, Yorkshire, on June 21, 1840, he moved with his family to Upper Canada as a teenager and later felt called to missionary work. He became known for his long years of Methodist ministry among First Nations communities on the coast of British Columbia, where he traveled widely and built a strong public reputation.
His writing grew directly out of that work. Books such as Among the An-ko-me-nums, or Flathead Tribes of Indians of the Pacific Coast and Up and Down the North Pacific Coast by Canoe and Mission Ship mix autobiography, travel narrative, and missionary history, giving readers a lively sense of place as well as his own convictions.
He died in Vancouver on January 13, 1914. Today he is remembered both as a major Methodist missionary figure in western Canada and as an author whose books preserve one settler-era view of coastal British Columbia and the people he worked among.