It was in this year [1805] that the first
"camp-meeting" in Canada was held in Adolphustown, where the
first Methodist class of the province was organized, in
1790, by its first Methodist preacher, William Losee, and
its first Methodist chapel erected in 1792 (Letters of Rev.
Anson Green, in the Christian Guardian, Dated
February 25 and March 6, 1860). Camp-meetings had been
extensively held in the Western United States for about five
years. They originated among the Presbyterians. They seemed
justified by the religious necessities of the frontier,
where there were but few chapels, and where, after the
harvests, the settlers could conveniently travel
considerable distances from home, and avail themselves of a
week of camp life for religious instruction and social
intercourse. They immediately became favourite occasions;
the scattered population from twenty, fifty, or a hundred
miles around, traveled to them in wagons, on horseback, or
on foot. Some brought tents, some erected booths of trees
and shrubs. The scene, circled with these temporary but
picturesque shelters, in the midst of a primeval forest,
illuminated at night by pine torches, thronged by thousands
of people, varied by a daily succession of sermons, or
prayer-meetings, or hymns, which sometimes resounded for
miles through the wooded solitudes, presented a poetic and
indescribable interest, and could not fail to give a
profound impression to the powerful, though rude eloquence,
of the frontier preachers.
[...]
This first camp-meeting in Canada
appeared to Dr. Bangs a salient fact in the history of
Canadian Methodism. He therefore made particular notes
respecting it. They show that the confusion incidental, if
not inevitable to such occasions, occurred, but also that
"it was attended by extraordinary displays of the favor and
power of God."