John Sperry

John Sperry was born in Leicester, England, in 1924 and went to the Canadian Arctic as a newly ordained priest in 1950, serving the community of Coppermine (now Kugluktuk) for nineteen years. He learned Inuinnaqtun and translated the Gospels, the Book of Common Prayer and some 200 hymns into it. He was Anglican Bishop of the Arctic from 1974 to 1990, was named to the Order of Canada in 2002, and died in Hay River in 2012. Igloo Dwellers Were My Church is his memoir of the North.