James Nisbet

James Nisbet (September 8, 1823 – September 30, 1874) was a Scottish born missionary to Canada.

He was born near Glasgow in Scotland, the youngest of 10 children. In 1840, he had travelled with his older brother, Henry, to London both seeking to serve as missionaries with the London Mission Society. Henry was accepted, and served in Samoa for 36 years. James returned to Glasgow, but still sensed a "call" to minister elsewhere, and emigrated to the New World in 1844, with his widower father and two sisters.

Settling in Canada West in the growing city of Toronto, Nisbet studied at the newly established Knox College. He graduated in 1848, and after serving with the Canadian Sabbath School Mission, was Ordained as a Presbyterian Church of Canada (Free Church) minister in January 1850, and Inducted into the Oakville Presbyterian Church and Knox Church "Sixteen" pastoral charge, the latter where the Sixteen Mile Creek crossed Dundas Street. His father and siblings also joined him in Oakville, where his four children (all born in Western Canada) resided, after their parents death in 1874, although two daughters were living with an aunt there from 1870.

He ministered to the Oakville and Knox 16 congregations (and on special assignments throughout the region, and beyond) for over twelve years, until he was appointed by the new Canada Presbyterian Church Synod, as a "foreign missionary" to assist his Knox College classmate John Black in the Red River Colony in 1862. Working with Black, he helped develop congregations in the area at Little Britain, Headingley and at Fort Garry, (later called Winnipeg). A school was built beside the original Kildonan Presbyterian Church, later named Nisbet Hall. The present University of Winnipeg traces its roots back to that school, where Manitoba College held its first classes in 1871.

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