The arrival of an age of peace, immigration, and agriculture in British North America meant a dramatically different relationship between Natives and newcomers, a shift in relations that explains the effort of state and church to assimilate Aboriginal communities through residential schools. That changed relationship would lead to the 1846 gathering at Orillia. This coincidence of state concern for policy towards Indians and church involvement in social policy sometimes resulted in efforts to school the Indians in residential institutions, first in New Brunswick at the end of the eighteenth century.

    A non-sectarian Protestant missionary organization, the New England Company, turned its attention to British North America and to Indians in Canada after the War of the American Revolution. The company intended to establish three schools for Indian children, but the one at Sussex Vale, near present-day Saint John, emerged as the central focus of evangelical and humanitarian efforts to the New Brunswick Indians after its startup in 1787. In the 1790s the society decided to establish six 'Indian Colleges,' and one of the newly designated academies was the existing school at Sussex Vale. Lack of success led to the closure of several of the new institutions after 1795, and the facility at Sussex Vale, which continued in operation until 1826, remained the principal location of company efforts.

    Thanks largely to the destitution that New Brunswick Indians were suffering as European settlement expanded in the region, Indian parents were more willing, or at least resigned, to hand their children over to the humanitarians.