Canadian missionaries were among the earliest to travel to Asian countries and be stationed there, and were responsible for opening the eyes of Canadians to the ways of the Orient. In the 19th century, missionary societies based on spreading social gospel sprang up in the West. Their work included not only spreading faith, but also establishing medical care and schooling. Many of the Canadians who went abroad as missionaries went under the auspices of the China Inland Mission founded in London in 1865. Canadian missionary work in Asia is first recorded in Japan, when two Canadian Protestant missionaries went there in 1873 and established a station and founded several schools.
The first Canadians to plead the missionary cause of China were Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth. In 1887, they left Toronto for China, beginning more than four decades of missionary work there, while raising a family of 11 children. One of the more prominent Canadian missionaries in China was Reverend James Endicott, whose first trip to China was in 1893. Endicott, who also served a term as moderator for the United Church, would come to advise the Nationalist General Chiang Kai-shek but equally respected the Communists.
In the late 1930s, Dr Norman Bethune from Gravenhurst, Ont., who was descended from generations of surgeons from Scotland, joined up with Mao Zedong's legendary guerrilla army unit at the front in remote northern China. Bethune performed operations on the battlefield, including procedures such as mobile blood transfusions that he pioneered in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). He met his death in China from blood poisoning when he cut his finger during an operation. Mao's eulogy proclaimed Bethune a martyr. Perhaps because of his association with the Communists led by Mao, Bethune is neither well-known nor even admired at home, but he remains the best-known Canadian in China.
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Norman Bethune
Bethune Memorial House National Historic Site of Canada