James Nisbet

James Nisbet (September 8, 1823-September 30, 1874) was born near Glasgow in Scotland in 1823, the youngest of 10 children, and emigrated to the New World in 1844, with his widower father and two sisters. In 1840, he travelled with an older brother, Henry, to London, England both seeking to serve as missionaries with the London Mission Society. Henry was accepted, and served in Samoa for 36 years. James returned to Glasgow, but still sensed a "call" to minister elsewhere.

Settling in Canada in the growing city of Toronto, Nisbet studied at the newly-established Knox College. He graduated in 1848, and after serving with the Canadian Sabbath School Mission, was ordained as a Presbyterian Church of Canada (Free Church) minister in January 1850, and Inducted into the Oakville Presbyterian Church and Knox Church "Sixteen" pastoral charge, where the Sixteen Mile Creek crossed Dundas Street. His father and siblings joined him in Oakville and where his four children (all born in Western Canada) lived, after their parents death in 1874.

He ministered to the Oakville and Knox 16 congregations (and on special assigments throughout the region) for over twelve years, until being appointed by the Canada Presbyterian Church Synod, as a "foreign missionary" to assist his Knox College classmate John Black in the Red River Colony in 1862. Working with Black, he helped develop congregations at Little Britain, Headingley, and at Fort Garry, {later called Winnipeg}. A school was built beside the original Kildonan Church, later named Nisbet Hall. The present University of Winnipeg traces its roots back to that school, where Manitoba College held its first classes in 1871.

After stressing the need for further ministry and mission to the Cree and Metis in Western Canada, the Synod then appointed him to move from Kildonan, further into the North-West.

In 1866, he led a party of pioneers that included his wife (1864) Mary MacBeth, the daughter of one of the Kildonan Church Elders, to the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan area. They arrived on July 26, 1866 and formed a mission to bring Christianity to the prairie Indian nations. It was Nisbet who named the community Prince Albert after British royalty; namely as a memorial to Queen Victoria's deceased husband.

James Nisbet was a skilled carpenter as well as a reverend. With this skill he built the first church, which was a log structure that can today be found in Kinsmen Park, Prince Albert. During the times of smallpox he created a crude vaccination which saved hundreds of lives. The missionary was also known for planting crops and gradens to help feed the population during several lean years. He was assisted in his work by two pioneers John McKay and George Flett, both of which were ordained and continued to be missionaries for the rest of their lives.

After living in Prince Albert for eight years, Nisbet was forced back east to Kildonan due to ill health. Both he and his wife died there in September 1874. The Prince Albert mission became a congregation on July 1st, 1883. St. Paul's Presbyterian Church was built in 1906 and was a continuation of the pioneer congregation sprouting from Nisbet's missionary service. This church can still be found beside the Gabriel Dumont Institute, in downtown Prince Albert.