Robert Jaffray was a missionary to China, Indonesia and several other countries in the early 20th century.
He was born into a wealthy Canadian family. His father owned the Toronto Globe and wanted his son to one day become its CEO. Robert however, as a young man, sensed he might become a missionary, and his feelings were confirmed through a meeting with the founder of missionary society, The Christian and Missionary Alliance. Although his father was very opposed to his calling, Robert trained with the Christian and Missionary Alliance and went out to China to serve in Wuzhou, Guangxi in 1897.
He proved to be extremely capable and visionary and soon he was serving as leader of all C&MA work in South China. While he was there, his responsibilities included mission administration, preaching, evangelistic missions, assistance in founding the Wuzhou Bible School (later called the "Alliance Seminary in Hong Kong"), editor of the Chinese "Bible Magazine", the first Chinese language magazine of its kind, which was read not just in China, but in Chinese-speaking communities round the world.
Jaffrey also founded the first Chinese missionary society called the "Chinese Foreign Missionary Union". The CFMU sent out missionaries to Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. When asked to be the president of the CFMU he refused as he believed that Chinese leaders should take up the role instead.
In 1898 Jaffray started making trips to what is now Vietnam, and in 1916 he was elected Superintendent of the Vietnam Field.
Jaffray served in Wuzhou for 35 years, in spite of a heart condition and diabetes. In 1942, Japan invaded an island in Indonesia where he was stationed with his wife, Minnie, and his daughter. Soon after the invasion, Jaffray and other missionaries were arrested by the Japanese, and sent to internment camps. He remained captive until his death in 1945 from illness and malnutrition.
In the European Reservation 1938 list, Jaffray appears as the owner of House #22 on Cheung Chau. Clearly he, and possibly his C&MA colleagues, used Cheung Chau as other missionaries did, for summer holidays, rather than incur the expense of returning to their home countries each year.
In 1949 when the Chinese expelled all foreign missionaries from China, the Wuzhou Bible School that Jaffray founded moved to what had been Jaffray’s home on Cheung Chau and set up there as the Hong Kong Alliance Seminary. As he had died four years earlier, he may have left his home to the society in his will, though it was in a sorry state having been destroyed in the war.
Since its move, the seminary has grown and expanded and it is now known as the Alliance Bible Seminary.
It has named its library extension the Jaffray Memorial Hall. At some point it took over what was House #23 so the Seminary today occupies quite a large area.
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