In the meantime, Bompas arranged for a young missionary from Ontario to set up a mission at Herschel Island. Isaac Stringer paid his first visit to Herschel in the spring of 1893, the start of a lifelong interest in the island and its people.

Stringer married Sarah Ann "Sadie" Alexander in Ontario in March, 1896, and shortly thereafter they both departed for the north, "burning with a missionary zeal laced with a sense of adventure on the far side of the cold horizon."

Isaac was then 26 years old, Sadie 24.