Fonds 39 - Archibald Fleming fonds

Archibald Lang Fleming was born at Greenock, Scotland on September 8, 1883. Upon leaving school, he entered the firm of John Brown and Company, the famous shipbuilders of Clydebank and it was during his years in Glasgow that he became interested in mission work. In 1906, he went to Canada to train at Wycliffe College in Toronto. His interest in the Inuit people and mission work and an appeal from Bishop George Holmes of Moosonee for a young man to work in Baffin Island, led Fleming to establish a mission at Lake Harbour on Baffin Island in 1909. In 1912, Fleming returned to college where he was ordained a deacon in 1912 and a priest in 1913. He returned to Baffin Island in 1916, however, because of ill health was only able to undertake light work. After crossing of the Foxe Peninsula, he was made a member of the Royal Geographic Society. Until his first appointment as archdeacon of the Arctic in 1927, he served first as financial secretary and chaplain to Wycliffe College and then as rector of Old Stone Church in Saint John, New Brunswick. His travels as bishop of the Arctic earned him the title "The Flying Bishop." He was author of "The History of Saint John's Church, Saint John, New Brunswick" (1925) and "Archibald of the Arctic" (1956). He died on May 17, 1953 in Toronto, Ontario.