HISTORICAL TIMELINE OF RURAL LIFE MISSION
May 29, 1936 Mae Brooks takes train from Toronto to the Lakehead (Thunder Bay).
She began visiting schools and homes in the country west of the Lakehead.
1938 Aune Ikavelko joins her. Mr Snoddy of Brantford donates a 1936 Ford to the work.
1939 Esther Rissanen and Mary Davis are now working with Mae and Aune.
1940 Aune goes back to work as a nurse in Finland during the war.
1942 The work was referred to as the “New Canadian Mission”.
1944 Name changed to “Rural Canada Mission”
1944 Round Lake Bible Camp (RLBC) hosts its first campers
1944 - 1945 Sunday School started in the Zaphe home in the Brent Park area of Port Arthur
June 1945 Rural Life Mission was incorporated with the Ontario Government.
1947 - 1952 Mrs. Mildred Lappala begins a Finnish Radio Broadcast on C.K.P.R. at the Lakehead
1947 Mildred and Aune begin a S. S. in Geraldton, ON
1946 New cabins built at RLBC by Malen Price
1948 Mildred and Aune begin a S. S. in Sprucedale, ON
1948 The new Brent Park Church is dedicated.
1948 One of the first RLM conferences was held.
1952 Malen Price and helpers built a Mission House (Bethel) near Kakabeka Falls, ON
1952 Charles Einwechter moves a chapel on Beamish Ave. in Geraldton to the present location
1952 The work was begun at Schreiber. After January 1955 it continued on independently of RLM.
1954 - 1976 Norman Browett began an itinerant ministry covering areas from Lake Ontario to James Bay and Dryden to the northern Quebec border. He distributed tracts, New Testaments, Bible courses as well as some preaching. He taught the Bible in many schools and also visited logging camps.
1955 Round Lake Bible Camp property is purchased.
June 1955 Mae Brooks and Art Waters are married.
1955 - 1956 Christian work in Vermillion Bay near Dryden ON
1955 - 1970 Mae began selling in her Book Room in Hagersville
1958 - 1969 The West End Mission is begun in Hagersville
1962 - 1987 Waterbrook Camp started
1962 Bob Miller puts a basement under the Jonesville Gospel Church, Geraldton
1965-1966 There is a work at Little Current on Manitoulin island.
June 1972 An Old Bank building in Sprucedale is purchased for a chapel.
1973 A new enlarged front is put on the Thunder Bay chapel.
1973 A house trailer is purchased and moved to Sprucedale as a parsonage for the Forceys.
1974 Geraldton and Sprucedale churches now called Faith Chapels
September 1977 David Knight goes to Geraldton
1979 Work is begun on a new recreation hall at RLBC.
March 1980 Art Waters dies.
December 1980 David Knight marries Leesa Clements
1984 Major alterations and addition made to Thunder Bay Faith Chapel
July 1986 Don & Deb Nicholson go to Sprucedale Faith Chapel to minister
October 1986 Dedication service for the new church in Geraldton.
August 1987 Earls move to Armstrong ON, a CN railway town and former D.E.W. line station, to start a new work.
February 1989 The old Mennonite chapel in Armstrong is purchased.
1993 Beginning of construction of new chapel, dining hall, kitchen complex at RLBC.
1994 Mae hands over deed of the property to the congregation at Thunder Bay Faith Chapel
July 1994 Steve and Ruth Ann Woods take over the work in Geraldton Faith Chapel
July 1994 Round Lake Bible Camp celebrates fifty years of ministry
August 1994 David and Leesa move near Uxbridge, ON and take over leadership of RLM from Mae
May 1995 Mark and Christy Arnold join RLM to direct RLBC and pastor O’Connor Baptist Church
October 1995 Dedication of new chapel building erected in Sprucedale.
July 1997 A group from Sprucedale congregation goes to Armstrong to build an addition to the church.
February 1998 Mae passes into glory.
May 1999-2009 Daniel and Bonnie Blanchet continue under RLM in a Francophone ministry in northeastern Ontario and in northwestern Quebec that they had been involved in for several years. They return to Quebec in the spring of 2009.
Summer 2008 A Mission Home is purchased in Thunder Bay near Faith Chapel. Jack and Pennie Earls move into this home in August and Jack is appointed Field Supervisor.
August 2010 Clinton and Ann Saito take over the ministry from the Earls at Armstrong Faith Chapel.