Welcome to the Parsons family

We have a new bishop in the diocese, the Rt. Rev. David Parsons, and his wife, Rita. David retired from his role as bishop of The Arctic on Dec. 31, 2024.

The couple has three sons, two in western Canada and one in Hampton. That’s where their four grandchildren live, so that’s where they wanted to be. Not only did they find a house there, they found one on the same street. 

So far this winter, David has been ice fishing every chance he gets with at least one grandchild. When he’s not fishing, he’s baking. Retirement is good!

EARLY LIFE
David was raised in Goose Bay, Labrador, while Rita is from Saskatchewan. In his life he has had many and varied roles: postal worker, youth leader, electronics technician, lumberjack, cab driver, door-to-door vacuum salesman, and in his own words, a “dope-smoking hippy.”

After high school, David got a job with Canada Post and thought he was pretty much set for life with a good, unionized government job. But God had him earmarked for bigger and better things. 

By his own account though, David took a very long and scenic route to the priesthood, kicking and screaming for much of the way.

Despite his life plans, David left Goose Bay and his Canada Post job in 1973 to join Canada World Youth, to meet his need for adventure. 

After a year of travel across Canada and in Costa Rica, he came back to Newfoundland to take an electronics course, correctly judging that electronics would play a large role in daily life to come. 

From there, he got a job with Canadian National Telecommunications in the Arctic. Rita was a supervisor at the same company.

His courting skills were a bit unorthodox, but successful. He showed up at her door with a loaf of fresh bread he had made.

“I said, ‘I’m going to have to marry you,’ and two years later, we were married,” said Rita. “I was a good Catholic girl. I thought I was going to go to hell when I married this Anglican boy.”

Despite David’s habit of attending church and talking to God, he considered himself a poor Christian. He loved to dabble in the unknown, the mysterious, the spiritual, the unexplained. He thought all that might be Godly, but he had no spiritual mentors to guide him.

Beyond that, he always had the sense that he was lost, that he would never reach heaven.

He sat in church one day with those feelings swirling in his head, when the priest looked at him and said, ‘something’s the matter with you.’

His response: “leave me alone!”

EUROPEAN ADVENTURES
By 1979, Rita and David had left their jobs, flew to Europe and bought a camper van. They planned a tour from Crete to the UK and just about everywhere in between. But a strange series of events sent them home more quickly than they had planned.

There were many people doing the same European camping circuit, so they made many friends. One was a guy in Portugal who told David he was an atheist. While there, this man became very sick and David prayed for him.

“He was cured, and I was shocked that God answered my prayer,” said David. “It was a strong, powerful moment, and I said, ‘God, I want to join your army. I want to fight Satan.’”

It didn’t take long for Satan to fight back. Shortly after, David was cooking supper in the van when Rita took very sick. David felt this unearthly message: ‘you’re going to fight me? I’m going to destroy your wife.’

“I was freaking out! Here I am under spiritual attack with nothing but the Lord’s Prayer!”

He was so startled he couldn’t even say it correctly, and then he began to question the reality of it all. 

“Was this my imagination? Was I mentally unbalanced? Was it the dope? Then I heard, ‘stop concentrating on evil. Concentrate on me.’”

Then all was still, the campground was quiet, and Rita was peacefully sleeping. But God had much more to say.
In the coming days, David heard many messages: 

‘David, you say you want to fight Satan. You don’t have to. Jesus already defeated him.’
‘You always knew this day was coming. It has arrived.’
‘All you’ve accomplished is complete vanity to me. It means nothing.’ 
‘This trip you are on is not what I want. I want you to go tell everyone about me. In churches and outside them. Go home. Tell the priests, the bishops, the people to come to me.’

“It all made perfect sense, but what didn’t make sense was how I was going to tell Rita,” he said, adding the doubts began shortly after.

“I’m not a good Christian. I’m a dope-smoking hippy. You’re going to have to get someone else.”

But strangely, he began telling people about Jesus.

“People ask me when I was ordained. I was ordained in a van in Portugal!”

BACK TO NEWFOUNDLAND
In the meantime, Rita wanted to start a family. And after getting pregnant, her health demanded they give up the hippy lifestyle and get back to Canada.

They bought a house in Newfoundland, had three sons, and “lived in abject poverty for 10 years,” said David, while the wrestling match between him and God went on.

“It was frustrating for me,” said Rita. “He was always out there talking to people. But there were questions. Am I called? Which denomination? I told him I’ll go wherever you want. Just make up your mind. But he couldn’t.”

While David spent a lot of time talking to people about God, he met lots of obstacles.

“Some people in the church were on board, some were not,” he said. “I was seen a wolf by some. A religious fanatic by others.

“Was I mentally unbalanced, or with God? I didn’t want to be the guy from Mad Magazine with the sign that said ‘The end is near’ but I was.”

It took a few epiphanies for David to find his direction, “but once I started, I didn’t trust David Parsons one bit,” he said. “I got rid of the drugs, the drinking to get drunk, the psychic stuff.”

People suggested he join Church Army, now Threshold Ministries, but he resisted. 

“Anglicans hate evangelism,” he said. 

CHURCH ARMY
He finally went to Toronto in the late 1980s to study with Church Army for two years. That is where things truly turned around and the life God had planned for him fell into place.

“Once we realized God was working in our life, we became an open book so that he could write his story upon our life,” said David. “We started out as adventurers until God intervened in our lives and redirected our plans and the direction of our life.”

After completing his studies, he served in Aklavik in the Arctic. Then they moved to Saint John for 10 years to run an 18-bed hospital hostel for Church Army.

While in Saint John he also ran the Saint John Seafarers Mission and became the diocesan refugee co-ordinator.

As well, he helped run TEC — Teens Encounter Christ — for the diocese for nine years, though he predicted he would be a terrible failure with teens. It turned out he was wrong.

From Saint John, the family returned to the Arctic, this time to Inuvik. In 2004 he was ordained, and in 2012, he was elected bishop of the Diocese of The Arctic.

“I was terrified,” he said. “I didn’t want to be bishop.”

But Rita, and even one of their sons, had seen visions of David dressed in purple. It was Rita who convinced him to let his name stand, so that if it didn’t come to fruition, at least he’d know.

“It was God’s will,” said Rita. “I believe he’s been faithful to the call.”

Now in a new phase of their lives, they are perfectly content to spend as much time as they can with their grandchildren, who range in age from four to 11. They enjoy the outdoors and have discovered the trails around Hampton.

And for many days through the past two months, they’ve enjoyed fresh fish on the barbecue, a labour of love for David — both the catching and the eating.

PHOTO CAPTIONS:
1.  The Rt. Rev. David Parsons and his wife, Rita, in their Hampton home. David had sourdough bread rising and baking on the day the NB Anglican visited.  (McKnight photo)
2.  The Parsons family in 1989 at Jackson's Point, Ont., a Salvation Army camp, with David, Rita and the boys: Davey, Matthew and Dustin.
3.  Archdeacon Perry Cooper chats with Bishop David Parsons (Diocese of The Arctic) and his wife, Rita, during Diocesan Synod in November at Christ Church Cathedral.  (Derwin Gowan photo)
4.  David, centre, sews his pants during a Sunday day off on the Melneck farm in Innisfree, Alberta where he worked one summer throwing hay bales.
Other photos coutesy of David & Rita Parsons.