Fonds F505 - United Church of Canada Woman's Missionary Society fonds

The United Church of Canada Woman's Missionary Society (WMS) brought together in October 1925 the Women's Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the Woman's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church (Canada) and the Canada Congregational Woman's Board of Missions. The new Society had its first annual meeting in 1926. Like the earlier societies, it brought the message of missions before the entire community of the Church, while offering financial support and personnel to its own wide mission programme. The Home and Overseas Missions were organized into separate Departments, and other Departments were devoted to Finance, Home Organization, Literature, Periodicals, and Scholarship and Candidates.

The foreign missions were under an Executive Secretary of the Foreign Mission Department (renamed Overseas Missions in 1945), with secretaries responsible for each foreign nation in which the Society served. The women's work encompassed the whole of the modern century's missionary ideal: medical service, including clinics and nursing, but also hospital building, financing and administration; education from the primary to the university level; evangelism, visitation and social service. By the 1950s, control of many of these mission enterprises had been transferred to local leadership. The Society worked in cooperation with the United Church's Board of Overseas Missions in many of these missions.

The home missions were under an Executive Secretary of the Home Missions Department. The Department worked with immigrants and the poor, on Aboriginal reserves where they operated hospitals and schools, and in cities where they ran boarding schools and homes for out-of-town children. The Society originally established a number of schools and hospitals, predominantly in Western Canada, but these were gradually turned over to government administration.

In 1962 the Society's overseas missions work was merged with the new Board of World Mission; the home missions work was merged with the Board of Home Missions. Other work was incorporated into the Board of Women, established in 1962, and into the general work of United Church Boards in which women were achieving more equal participation.