1 Bishop Jacob Mountain

Born in Norfolk, England in 1749 and educated at Cambridge, Jacob Mountain was an Anglican cleric appointed first bishop of the Diocese of Quebec in 1793. Prior to the creation of the Quebec Diocese, all of British North America fell under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Nova Scotia. The creation of a new diocese was necessitated by the influx of Loyalists arriving in Upper and Lower Canada. When Mountain arrived in Quebec, he faced the difficult task of consolidating and developing the vast new diocese. His mandate to make the Church of England the official state religion of the Canadas led to conflict with both Lower Canada’s overwhelmingly Catholic francophone population and the ethnically and religiously diverse inhabitants of Upper Canada – who were accustomed to the separation of church and state. Despite these difficulties, Mountain managed to lay the foundations on which the Anglican Church in Canada was built. In 1793, the Quebec see contained only nine Anglican clergymen and about as many churches. At the time of Mountain’s death, the number of clergymen had risen to 60. Undeterred by distance, arduous travel and war, Mountain made numerous trips to Upper Canada, where, in the last decade of his episcopate, he established 19 new missions.

2 record(s) found