The Northern Ontario Pastoral Institute was a nonprofit organization, providing clinical pastoral education in Northwestern Ontario. The Institute was established in 1990 and dissolved in 2025. During that time, it co-ordinated and supported opportunities for pastoral education in Thunder Bay and around the region. The Institute was a member organization of the Canadian Association for Pastoral Practice and Education, which later became the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care.

Toivo Pajala was born in 1903 in Vimpeli, Finland and educated at Western Bible College in Winnipeg. At age 19, Pajala migrated to Canada; by 1923, he migrated to Port Arthur, Ontario. Originally Pajala worked as a bushworker. Pajala is known as a preacher: first Laestadian and then Pentecostal. He was ordained in Toronto, in 1946. In 1949, Pajala married his wife, Sylvia.

In Port Arthur, Pajala served as the pastor of Saalem Finnish Pentecostal Church (1949-1963). By 1951, Pajala founded a Finnish-language Pentecostal radio program; it reached the rural areas of the Lakehead, including the camps of bushworkers. In 1936, Pajala migrated to Waukegan, Illinois; he worked as a pastor until retiring in 1967. Upon retirement, Pajala returned to Port Arthur. He remained active in the church until his passing in 1972.

• Lakehead University Archives. Tovio Pajala fonds. https://archives.lakeheadu.ca/index.php/rev-toivo-pajala-fonds
• Kahara, Tellervo, and Finnish Pentecostal Church Saalem. Kansanpappi, Toivo Pajala. Canadan Uutiset, 1985.