The Gaspards of Pine Croft by Ralph Connor

Chief Factor MacKinroy himself would have been the first to assign to the missionary, the Rev. John Chambers, M. A., Oxon., the position of premier influence and even of authority, not only in the little community at the Post but in the whole district tributary to the Post, with its nondescript population of white traders and trappers, half-breeds and Indians. And this was due to those mysterious qualities that go to the making of personality, and to the services which the possession of these qualities fitted him to render. He was the titular head of the Anglican Mission, which of course gave him a standing at once influential and authoritative, but had he not been more his official position as a dignitary of a great church would have gone but a small way to win him place and power.

Fifteen years ago, raw from the greatest university in the English speaking world, he had come up with a Hudson's Bay Company brigade and had planted himself here in this far north outpost of civilisation, to establish a mission in partibus infidelium for his church. Quite a year before his arrival, his coming had been duly announced by the company authorities in London to Factor MacKinroy, who received the announcement with explosive profanity in the "twa langiges" and then speedily forgot all about the thing.