ABSTRACT
'We turn our backs on the last traces of civilization, and our faces toward the centre of the Dark Continent. . . ' (Canadian Independent 1887: 66). With these words the young missionary who would become 'Canada's Livingstone' began his evangelical career in Central Africa. Walter T. Currie was to spend 25 years in Africa, sometimes travelling in what he described as the footsteps of his boyhood hero, David Livingstone (Figs 12.1 and 12.2). Born into a Toronto family already interested in the abolition of slavery, as a boy Currie read and re-read Livingstone's accounts of his journeys. Livingstone - a failure as a missionary and only partially successful as an 'explorer' and an obsessive personality - was a central figure in the imagination of late nineteenth-century Britain and the Dominions. This chapter compares the missionary projects of Livingstone and Currie, with particular reference to their interest in acquiring, and their subsequent use of, African objects.
