She showed little interest in religion in her early life, but the 1871 murder of missionary John Patteson in the Solomon Islands apparently inspired her to turn towards evangelicalism in her midlife.

[1][2] While living at a Hudson's Bay Company outpost in Athabasca Bompas started keeping a diary, recording her feelings of loneliness as her husband travelled for long periods seeking converts.

[1] A modern commentator notes that Bompas approached missionary work with an "imperialist gaze": she frequently criticized the appearance, cleanliness and perceived wildness of the First Nations people.

While in England she published a book, Owindia: A True Tale of the Mackenzie River Indians, North-West America, which was both a romantic tribute to her adopted daughter and a tool to promote her and her husband's missionary work.

[1][2] For the next twelve years she spent time in England and Montreal, only rarely visiting her husband in the northwest, but in 1896 she returned to the Yukon at the beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush where she established a social center for the rapidly growing population of miners.