“If you google Paris, images of the Eiffel Tower will show up. … If you google Moose Factory, St. Thomas church will show up. It’s iconic. … In a time when we are tearing down statues and monuments, this community has chosen to uphold this building, this historic church, because of what it stands for. It’s in remembrance of our heritage, our past, the good things and the bad things and things that we say we will never, ever forget” (Norm Wesley, Emeritus Chair, St. Thomas Restoration Committee; former Chief of Moose Cree First Nation).
Moose Factory is Ontario’s oldest permanent European settlement and one of Canada’s oldest continuous sites of Indigenous-European exchange and intermarriage. But in the late 1800s few residents here had strong connections to Ontario and Canada. Their home was the oldest “overseas” trading hub of the Hudson’s Bay Company – the world’s oldest continuously operating trading company. Until 1880, Moose Factory was more connected to London and Stromness, than to Toronto and Montreal. Most HBC staff hailed from Orkney and Scotland rather than Canada. They saw Moose Factory as part of the distant “Nor’ Wast,” but it became home for those who married into Cree families. From another perspective, these statements only scratch the surface of this island’s heritage – as an ancient summer gathering site within the larger homeland of the Môsonîwililiwak. Yet the perspectives of “the people of the Moose River” are also diverse and fluid, shaped by many sources and currents, much like the people themselves and their river. In this location stands Old St. Thomas. Built by HBC craftsmen with Cree assistance between 1856 and 1864, its heritage of reciprocity and intermarriage has deeper roots than the Indian Act. Deconsecrated in 2006, it is now being restored.
