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Soon after arriving back in Norway House, Benjamin received a letter asking him to work with Henry Steinhauer to establish a Methodist mission at Lac La Biche in present-day northeastern Alberta. By 1860, the Canadian Methodists saw that the northwest would be opened to settlement. Anticipating this, they appointed George McDougall as superintendent of their western missions. The McDougall and Steinhauer families were the most prominent families of Methodist missionaries.

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'My First Winter Trip' from John McDougall, 1898, Saddle, Sled and Snowshoe.
1860
Central Alberta


Credits:
Artist: J.E. Laughlin

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Gerald Hutchinson:
… I sensed that there was some distance between George MacDougall and Henry Steinhauer for quite a long time. Steinhauer was a little older, a better educated man who spoke five languages. George spoke only English and was a more experienced man, so George was appointed superintendent and of course, in that era, the leadership was with the white person. Steinhauer had built up his own enterprise at Whitefish Lake of which he was part and parcel and immensely proud-- justifiably so-- and when he left this shuffle of people George just simply told Henry Steinhauer that he had to go to Pigeon Lake. So when Steinhauer had just started his own ministry, he moved him out of his home and settlement and the mission that had built all through the years and sent him to go to Pigeon Lake. Steinhauer didn't move his family-- he came over alone. He arrived and found that nobody was prepared to meet him, that people didn't know anything about him, that there was no reception for him-- just nothing at all for him. He spent a very miserable few months and moved back to Whitefish Lake.

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The common Steinhauer - Sinclair grave
1960
Whitefish Lake, Alberta

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1875 marked a turning point in Steinhauer's life. Given his mission experience and In the face of rapid settlement and the resulting dislocation of Aboriginal people, he withdrew from the Canadian Methodist missionary society and asserted his First Nations identity more strongly. He remained a Methodist and continued his mission work.

As Steinhauer's assistant and close friend, Benjamin Sinclair became an important leader at Whitefish Lake. He remained a devout Methodist and an advocate of schooling.

In 1884 Benjamin Sinclair contracted influenza and died on December 28th. The next day, Henry Steinhauer died from the same flu epidemic. The families agreed to bury the two men in a common grave.