Born in Edinburgh in
1814, David Anderson completed his education at Exeter College, Oxford, and was ordained
as a deacon in the Anglican Church in
1837.
1 After a decade of clerical positions in England, the support of the
Archbishop of Canterbury led to his consecration in
1849 as the first bishop of the newly established diocese of
Rupert's Land, which was partly endowed by the Hudson's Bay Company.
2
Anderson did not prove a skilful church leader in a society divided by religious and
ethnic differences. The associate governor of
Rupert's Land lamented that the bishop
not only never thinks of what he is going to say [...] he is utterly incapable of
remembering what he has said.
3 During Anderson's 15 years as bishop, the
Red River Settlement was torn by a series of religious and socio-ethnic conflicts, some exacerbated by
his junior clerics, and some by the bishop himself.
4