Editing Methodism (section)

====Canada====
{{Main|Free Methodist Church in Canada|British Methodist Episcopal Church}}
{{Further|Methodist Church, Canada|United Church of Canada}}
[[File:Asbury FMC, Ontario, Canada.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|right|Asbury Free Methodist Church in [[Ontario]]]]

The father of Methodism in Canada was Rev. Coughlan, who arrived in Newfoundland in 1763, where he opened a school and travelled widely.

The second was [[William Black (Methodist)|William Black]] (1760–1834) who began preaching in settlements along the [[Petitcodiac River]] of [[New Brunswick]] in 1781.<ref>{{Cite DCB |first=G.S. |last=French |title=Black, William (1760–1834) |volume=VI |url=https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/black_william_1760_1834_6E.html |access-date=2023-11-11}}</ref> A few years afterwards, Methodist Episcopal circuit riders from the [[U.S. state]] of [[New York (state)|New York]] began to arrive in [[Canada West]] at Niagara, and the north shore of [[Lake Erie]] in 1786, and at the [[Kingston, Ontario|Kingston]] region on the northeast shore of [[Lake Ontario]] in the early 1790s. At the time the region was part of [[British North America]] and became part of Upper Canada after the [[Constitutional Act of 1791]]. [[Upper Canada|Upper]] and [[Lower Canada]] were both parts of the New York Episcopal Methodist Conference until 1810 when they were transferred to the newly formed Genesee Conference. Reverend Major George Neal began to preach in Niagara in October 1786 and was ordained in 1810 by Bishop Philip Asbury, at the Lyons, New York Methodist Conference. He was Canada's first saddlebag preacher and travelled from Lake Ontario to Detroit for 50 years preaching the gospel.<ref>[https://vitacollections.ca/notlheritage/3395224/data Niagara on the Lake Public Library website, ''A history of Grace United Church, Niagara-on-the-Lake'', by Margaret Peake Benton (2012)]</ref>

The spread of Methodism in the Canadas was seriously disrupted by the [[War of 1812]] but quickly gained lost ground after the [[Treaty of Ghent]] was signed in 1815. In 1817, the British Wesleyans arrived in the Canadas from the Maritimes but by 1820 had agreed, with the Episcopal Methodists, to confine their work to Lower Canada (present-day [[Quebec]]) while the latter would confine themselves to Upper Canada (present-day [[Ontario]]). In the summer of 1818, the first place of public worship was erected for the Wesleyan Methodists in [[York, Upper Canada|York]], later Toronto. The chapel for the First Methodist Church was built on the corner of King Street and Jordan Street, the entire cost of the building was $250, an amount that took the congregation three years to raise.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Peppiatt|first1=Liam|title=Chapter 48: The First Methodist Church|url=http://www.landmarksoftoronto.com/the-first-methodist-church|website=Robertson's Landmarks of Toronto Revisited}}</ref> In 1828, Upper Canadian Methodists were permitted by the General Conference in the United States to form an independent Canadian Conference and, in 1833, the Canadian Conference merged with the British Wesleyans to form the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada. In 1884, most Canadian Methodists were brought under the umbrella of the [[Methodist Church, Canada]].{{citation needed|date=May 2022}}

In the fall of 1873 and winter of 1874, General Superintendent [[B. T. Roberts]] of the [[Free Methodist Church]] visited [[Scarborough, Toronto|Scarborough]] on the invitation of Robert Loveless, a Primitive Methodist layman. Later, in 1876 while presiding over the very young North Michigan Conference, he read conference appointments that assigned C.H. Sage his field of labour—Canada. This led to the expansion of the Free Methodist Church in Canada. 

In 1925, the Methodist Church, Canada and most [[Presbyterian Church in Canada|Presbyterian]] congregations (then by far the largest Protestant communion in Canada), most Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec congregations, Union Churches in Western Canada, and the American Presbyterian Church in [[Montreal]] merged to form the [[United Church of Canada]]. In 1968, the [[Evangelical United Brethren]] Church's Canadian congregations joined the United Church of Canada. 

The [[Free Methodist Church in Canada]] is the largest Methodist denomination in the country at present. A smaller denomination, the [[British Methodist Episcopal Church]], remains active today as well.