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Rev. Peter Kelly was a United Church minister who ran the mission boat for 30 years. He was the first Haida minister, ordained in 1948. Born on April 21, 1885 in Skidegate, Kelly was the son of Methodist parents who sent him to the the Coqualeetza Institute in Sardis. In 1900, Kelly and a companion were the first two boys from the Queen Charlotte Islands to attend the Methodist-run school. At 18 he returned to Skidegate where he taught at the mission school for five years. In 1910 he was posted to Hartley Bay on the northwest side of Douglas Channel. In 1911 Kelly was one of the leaders of a delegation of more than 100 Aboriginal leaders who met in Victoria to discuss their grievances with the provincial government. Kelly, as one of the youngest delegates, urged his fellow Aboriginals to speak for themselves and no longer rely on Protestant or Catholic missionaries as intermediaries. The Victoria Indian Conference of 1911 agreed to follow Kelly's lead and have him convey their new-found self-assertiveness to Premier Sir Richard McBride. Kelly put politics aside briefly when he was invited to become the first Aboriginal to attend Columbian College in New Westminster from 1913 to 1916. He served as an ordained minister in Nanaimo and Bella Coola, then took charge of the mission boat "Thomas Crosby III". Having helped to create the Allied Indian Tribes of B.C., Kelly was very active in the Native Brotherhood of B.C.. Kelly took charge of churches at Union Bay and Cumberland in 1949, then was reassigned to Nanaimo and Parksville in 1952. He retired in Nanaimo in 1962. After suffering as stroke in February, he died in Nanaimo in 1966. One of Kelly's was La-ging-quo-na, meaning Roar of the Breakers. Alan Morley's biography of Reverend Kelly, "Roar of the Breakers" (1967), was commissioned by Kelly's wife Gertrude and the United Church Archives Committee of B.C. to commemorate the life and times of the Haida missionary.

Born: 1885
Died: 1966