‘The one with a pipe’: Late Arctic bishop Chris Williams empowered Indigenous leaders – The Anglican Journal

June 5, 2026

Long before he became Anglican diocesan bishop of the Arctic, Chris Williams—who died on May 16, six days before his 90th birthday—could make a strong first impression.

It was near 6 a.m. one day in May 1976 when Larry Robertson and his wife, married a week earlier, approached a mission house in Cambridge Bay after a trip that saw their plane break down. Robertson, later bishop of Yukon, was then a young priest assigned to the northern hamlet in what is now Nunavut. He saw that the house that would serve as his home needed repairs. Its windows were boarded up, but the lights were on, shining from around the plywood.

“I knock on the door and this guy comes out,” Robertson recalls. “He’s in his pyjamas, he’s got a pipe stuck in his mouth and puffing away. He takes the pipe out and he says, ‘You must be the Robertsons. Welcome to your new home.’ It was Chris.”

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