This is the second part of my account of a zealous Christian lady from Michigan (ca 1850-ca 1915) who in widowhood devoted herself to holiness causes in Ontario. Where she began life and where she ended is unknown to me.

Christians Workers Churches. In the last post we saw Mrs Risdon was a Salvation Army member from about 1885 or 1886 for almost ten years. In the early 1890s, the Salvation Army leadership decided the Army had overstretched itself organizationally and financially in Canada and closed some branches in Ontario.¹ Some officers thought the new strategy was abandoning wholehearted commitment to evangelism and was employing unholy fund-raising techniques. (The editor of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ’s Gospel Banner later agreed.²) Some Canadian officers felt overlooked by the SA leaders sent from England. When their concerns were not met as they hoped, five dozen officers resigned in 1892. Some opened missions, mostly in Toronto, under the name Christian Workers Missions/Churches (CWC).³ Very soon, MBiC leaders and the ex-Salvationists were exchanging visits and Mrs Risdon, sympathetic to the former SA officers’ cause, caught signs of a possible union. The MBiC had no congregations in urban Canada except in Waterloo, yet members were drifting in to Toronto for work. Some CWC leaders attended an MBiC camp meeting in Markham in 1894 and the MBiC conducted Quarterly Conferences, demonstrating for example, the footwashing ordinance in CWC meeting halls in Toronto 1894-1896 with CWC leaders and others interested in the MBiC brand of holiness attending.⁴ The Gospel Banner published the newsletter of the CWC for a few years. Mrs Risdon liked the possibility of union.⁵ Yet it did not happen. Maybe the MBiC, while as dedicated to holiness teachings as they were, was just too structured for the CWC people, who had felt constrained by the SA. The moment passed. Some CWC churches became Pentecostal after 1906, and others, influenced by fundamentalism, became founders of the Associated Gospel Churches which you may have heard of, a fine indigenous (and ironically, Reformed) Canadian denomination.⁶

In 1895, Mrs Risdon recorded an anecdote of great interest yet which has a chronological problem. Her story illustrates where holiness teaching could go against racism and suggests she had a biblical sense of justice in her holiness practice. She claimed that Toronto Mayor William H Howland (1844-1893), who was a supporter of and volunteered in numerous Christian missions in Toronto,⁷ dealt with racism in a hotel in Buffalo, NY, during a “Christian Workers convention.” Howland was mayor for just the years 1886 and 1887, and the CWC did not start until 1892, so the anecdote has conflated some events, or at least used names anachronistically. Howland was present in 1892 at the founding meeting in Toronto of what was at first called Christian Workers’ Missions.⁸ During the Buffalo convention, Mrs Risdon said, a coloured brother, a Rev Mr Hector, was told he had to eat alone in the kitchen, so Howland asked the hotel if they had a table big enough for 70 people in the kitchen, because the attendees would need to join Mr Hector in the kitchen.⁹ Rev Hector is almost certainly Rev John Henry Hector, a Prohibition Party orator, and an African Methodist Episcopal Zion minister who had this happen to him and other African-American party members on Feb 6 1888 in Buffalo: I hope the hotel reversed their rule at least that day.¹⁰ Refusal to serve African-Americans in public places such as hotels was common not just in the US south, but even in its north–and infamously in some towns in Ontario well into the middle of the twentieth century.

MBiC Missions in Toronto. After a few years, and some of the CWC interest dwindling, the MBiC decided to open missions of their own in Toronto starting in 1897. Mrs Risdon welcomed the mission opened on her east side of Yonge Street in 1898, and wrote some articles about meetings she attended at this East End Mission on Parliament Street.¹¹ We looked at the MBiC East End Mission in an earlier blog.¹²

The Christian Alliance. Yet Risdon herself had become involved at some point in the 1890s in another new mission in Toronto, the group that later became known as the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The Christian Alliance, as it was known at first, met at the related but distinct independent Bethany Chapel, conducting its meetings Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons promoting Alliance Deeper Life teachings, conventions and foreign missions.¹³ This effort was organized under the name the “Little Toronto Branch.”

Lindsay Reynolds, the Canadian C&MA historian, mentions that in 1897 Mrs Risdon commenced still other meetings, at 564 Parliament St in the name of the Canadian Alliance “in a house named ‘Darling Terrace.’”¹⁴ This was just after the time of her daughter Caisey’s death. Her part of the house, in a townhouse row which has been designated a Cabbagetown Heritage Conservation District building, she renamed “The Four-Fold Gospel Chapel.”

“Initially it was a ministry to women and children every afternoon. Later, Sunday services were added. On one occasion, the Little Toronto Branch hosted the distinguished Dr. Henry Wilson of New York, friend and co-worker with Dr. [Albert B] Simpson…Mrs Risdon was president and secretary of the Little Toronto Branch and a Mr. Raymond was elder. After Mrs. Risdon’s death some time later, the Little Branch closed.”¹⁵

Mrs Risdon wrote still other articles and devotions for the Gospel Banner, some of which no doubt have been lost due to the incompleteness of the preservation of the magazine.¹⁶ The last articles of hers I have seen were published in 1912-1913.¹⁷ I have no further references to her, though as I say, maybe they were in issues now lost, or perhaps in C&MA sources.

Elizabeth Risdon obviously loved Jesus and appreciated the outlet for her thoughts in the MBiC Gospel Banner. She gave years of her life to Christian ministry with little public recognition. The discovery of her maiden name (it might be McCuen) or an obituary, even a death notice, may open up other wholly new views on her life, which I hope someone will achieve soon. There are many such people waiting to be honoured. A near contemporary to Elizabeth Risdon, “Holy Ann” Preston (1810-1906), had her early biographer in Mrs Bingham (wife of SIM’s R V Bingham) and public (media-puffed) fame. [Not to put down Preston by any means: Helen E Bingham, An Irish Saint: The Life of Ann Preston “Holy Ann” (Toronto: William Briggs, 1st ed 1907, reprinted numerous times)]. Risdon did not have publicity or a biographer, and so my article pulls together only scraps preserved long afterward. God honours both women even if we can not.

Banner: Cecil Hall/ Spadina Avenue Hall, 381 Spadina Ave, Toronto, was one of several halls used by the Christian Workers Mission. This location was occupied by them about 1909-1913. Credit: Adam Wynne, ACO Toronto (2022)

1Russell G Moyles, The Blood and Fire in Canada: A History of the Salvation Army in the Dominion 1882-1976 (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1977) p 124-128.

2Henry S Hallman, “Editorials,” Gospel Banner (November 26 1895) p 8.

3Lauren Redinger, A Tree Well Planted: The Official History of the Christian Workers’ Churches of Canada and the Associated Gospel Churches 1892-1993 (Burlington, ON: Associated Gospel Churches, 1995) p 7, 19-20.

4More details in my biography of Samuel Goudie, from McMaster Divinity College Press, Hidden in Plain Sight: Sam Goudie and the Ontario MBiC.

5Elizabeth Risdon, “Union,” Gospel Banner (October 15 1895) p 4.

6Recently Peter Philpott, an AGC founder, had his biographer, David R Elliott, From Anvil to Pulpit: P. W. Philpott’s Spiritual Journey, His Family, and His Struggles for Ethical Integrity (Parkhill, ON: Theological Resources, 2023).

7https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/howland_william_holmes_12E.html

8Redinger, p 8.

9Gospel Banner (October 15 1895).

10https://www.betweenthecovers.com/pages/books/395759/rev-j-h-hector/broadside-announcement-2-western-new-york-prohibition-rallies-rev-j-h-hector-the-black-knight?soldItem=true

11Elizabeth Risdon, “Letter,” Gospel Banner (May 9 1899) p 12; “Report,” (January 23 1900) p 9; “Testimonies,” (February 20 1900) p 11.

12“The Strange Case of the MBiC East End Mission,” posted April 6 2024.

13Lindsay Reynolds, Footprints: The Beginnings of the C&MA in Canada (Toronto: The C&MA in Canada, 1981) p 196. The founder of the C&MA, Canadian-born Albert B Simpson, thought he was steering between Keswick and Wesleyan holiness theologies in a more biblical track, but most observers find little difference between his brand and Keswick (“Deeper Life”) teachings. I wonder if Mrs Risdon was aware of these affinities?

14Reynolds, p 198.

15Reynolds, p 198. Reynolds does not mention his sources for Mrs Risdon’s contribution; likely Alliance publications.

16Two appeared in 1903: a devotional, Gospel Banner (May 16 1903) p 2, and “Retrospective,” (June 20 1903) p 15, which has a few biographical references, unfortunately not very specific.

17Elizabeth Risdon, “Keep Thyself Pure,” Gospel Banner (February 1 1912) p 3. The later article, from (March 28 1912) p 1-2, includes a dream she experienced during a time of trials; again, not dated.