Cyril Bavin OBE was a New Zealand-born Australian Methodist minister and missionary to Fiji who became General Secretary to the YMCA Migration Department and Honorary Secretary of the Migration Bureau of the Overseas League based in London.
14 Facts About Cyril Bavin
1.
2.
Cyril Bavin was an advocate of mass migration from Britain to Canada, Australia and New Zealand both as a way to alleviate poverty in the mother country and as a means of building up the economy of these countries.
3.
Cyril Bavin was born in Nelson, New Zealand, and was one of nine children of the Rev Rainsford Bavin, a Methodist minister from Lincolnshire, England, and his New Zealand-born wife Emma, nee Buddle.
4.
Cyril Bavin's siblings were: Edna ; Jessie ; Sir Thomas Bavin; Gertrude ; Horace Bavin; Florence Bavin ; Lancelot Bavin; and Dora Bavin.
5.
Cyril Bavin married in 1867 and was then appointed to Timaru, Kaiapoi and Wanganui.
6.
Cyril Bavin was born during his parents time in Nelson and then lived in Wellington and Auckland.
7.
Cyril Bavin's family moved to Sydney from Auckland in 1889 and his father took charge of the William St Church.
8.
In 1896 Cyril Bavin was invited by the Methodist Episcopal Church in India to join the staff of the mission high school at Poona prior to entering the ministry.
9.
In 1914, Cyril Bavin contributed a chapter, The Indian in Fiji, to the book, A century in the Pacific, edited by James Colwell with an introduction by William Henry Fitchett.
10.
Cyril Bavin became a military secretary to the YMCA during World War I and was made an honorary major.
11.
Cyril Bavin represented the YMCA on the Children's Overseas Reception Board.
12.
Cyril Bavin later became an advocate of British migration to the Dominions.
13.
Cyril Bavin advocated the broadening of the basis of individual nomination of a prospective migrant to its extension from individuals to Church congregations, service clubs, friendly societies and lodges.
14.
Cyril Bavin married Vera Daphne Lovejoy in Mudgee, New South Wales in 1904.