Introduction: Before leaving his quarters at Fort Victoria in the recently established Colony of Vancouver Island on Sunday 18 March 1849, the Revd Robert John Staines took clerical vesture from his trunk. Yesterday, after a six-month journey from England, he came ashore from the Hudson’s Bay Company barque Columbia. Today his Sunday duties as Company Chaplain and Schoolmaster begin with the conduct of Divine Service. For his ministrations, he likely donned Anglican choir dress: cassock, surplice, scarf and his Cambridge BA hood
