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Mary Violet Deeprose was born in Stockdale, Ontario on February 11, 1903. She attended the United Church Training School in Toronto, 1938-1940, and was designated a deaconess by Alberta Conference, August 18, 1941. She was appointed by the Woman’s Missionary Society to the Crosby Girls’ Home in Lax Kw’alaams (then known as Port Simpson), 1940-1944. She left the work due to a family illness. From 1946-1949, she was employed as superintendent of the Mountview Social Service Home (Calgary). She taught in the public school system in Alberta from 1953 until her retirement in 1962. Violet Deeprose died at Drumheller, Alberta on February 22, 1991.

Barnabas Courtland Freeman was born in Frontenac County, Ontario, in July, 1869. He went to Saskatchewan as a missionary in 1891, was ordained by the Manitoba and Northwest Conference of the Methodist Church in 1892, and was married to Ida Lawson of Frontenac County the same year. In 1893, he travelled west to British Columbia, serving among the Indigenous peoples at Skidegate, Lax Kw’alaams (Port Simpson), Port Essington, and Cape Mudge. In 1910 he ventured south to serve pastorates in Cumberland, Revelstoke, Port Coquitlam, and Vancouver. He was elected President of B.C. Conference in 1920. Freeman died at Cape Mudge in 1935. Throughout most of his career, he wrote poetry, short stories and essays. His poetry was published in The New Outlook, The Christian Guardian, and other church periodicals.

Long before the missionaries came, the Hudson Bay Company had established a trading post known as "Fort Simpson." The Indigenous settlement was renamed "Port Simpson" following the closure of "Fort Simpson" by the Hudson's Bay Company. Methodist missionaries begin their missionary work with the Tsimshian Indigenous peoples in Lax Kw’alaams (Port Simpson) in the early 1870s. Lax Kw’alaams (Port Simpson) began a mission of the Methodist Church in 1874.Within months the Port Simpson Methodist Church was erected for services. In the late 1800s the church became Grace Methodist Church. In 1925 with Church Union the church became Grace United Church. It was later destroyed in a fire in 1931. A new church was opened and dedicated on February 20, 1938. Tragically, a fire destroyed this structure in January 2021.

The first of the Thomas Crosby mission boats was launched in 1912, replacing the Homespun, a small gasoline launch that had been in use since the Udal was lost in 1909. The Thomas Crosby I, II, and III served on the mainland for the Port Simpson District of the Methodist Church up to church union in 1925, being known at that time as the Crosby Mission. Under the United Church, the Mission became a pastoral charge, first called the Queen Charlotte (Marine) Pastoral Charge and then renamed Central Mainland Marine Mission in 1929. The Thomas Crosby III, built in 1923, was replaced with the more seaworthy Thomas Crosby IV in 1938, which in turn was replaced by the Thomas Crosby V in 1967, the Sea Island II being chartered for a brief period while the Thomas Crosby V was being built. Missionaries who served on the Crosby include R.C. Scott, Peter Kelley, R.H. McColl, John Towers, Bob Scales, Oliver Howard, Jack Gosse serving as a lay minister, Bob Faris and Gordon Taylor. In the 1970s, the Presbytery created an Oversight Committee to act as board for the Mission, and eventually most of the responsibility for the Mission's funding was transferred from the Presbytery to the Division of Mission (B.C.). Through the 1970s and 1980s, the Mission reported to both the Presbytery and D.M.C. (B.C.) through the Committee; during this period the staff was fairly large as well, with separate positions for the Master and the Missionary, as well as an engineer, deckhands and a nurse. Although the Thomas Crosby V was the only marine mission operating in the region in the 1980s, the cost of operating the Mission was becoming more and more of a concern to those involved, and several studies were conducted into the possibility of finding more cost-effective ways to conduct its work. Late in 1990, Prince Rupert Presbytery voted to recommend that the ship be sold, with a view to finding more cost effective ways of reaching the same constituency, although the 1992 report to Conference describes it as having had a ship in 1991 as well. Since then the Mission has relied on air travel to reach its points of call.