1875—1940 Copyright © 1998 by Michael D. Clarke, used with permission. Overview Like one of his best-selling novels, the life of John Buchan was full of adventure and achievement. He was one of the most accomplished men of the twentieth century: a successful barrister, a respected scholar, a popular journalist, a trusted diplomat, a prolific […]
1842—1923 Copyright © 1998 by Michael D. Clarke, used with permission. OverviewMargaret Proctor Burwash had a keen interest in the welfare of female students at the University of Toronto’s Victoria College, and believed that their education should be largely in the hands of women. To this end, she wrote in 1895, “I believe in men […]
1839—1918 Copyright © 1998 by Michael D. Clarke, used with permission. Overview Students spoke of him as an “evangelical mystic,” but during his long tenure from 1887 to 1915 as the chancellor of Canadian Methodism’s Victoria College, Nathanael Burwash managed to balance an intense piety with rcnowned skills as a negotiator and administrator. He was […]
1850—1934 Copyright © 1998 by Michael D. Clarke, used with permission. OverviewHugh Thomas Crossley, partner in the well-known Methodist revival team of Crossley and Hunter, was born on an isolated homestead in King Township in present-day Ontario. When he was seventeen, a visit to a Methodist camp meeting changed his life. After several days of […]
1904—1986 Copyright © 1998 by Michael D. Clarke, used with permission. OverviewThe political left in Canada has drawn an astonishing number of leaders from the ranks of clergy. The first leader of a socialist (CCF) government in Canada was the former Baptist minister, Tommy Douglas, in Saskatchewan, and the first leader of the federal CCF […]
1834—1907 Copyright © 1998 by Michael D. Clarke, used with permission. Overview Timothy Eaton is known from coast to coast in Canada for revolutionary merchandising and for building a retail empire by supplying the needs of city dwellers and country folk alike. Despite his fame, Eaton preferred to remain largely in the background; he never […]
1912—1991 Copyright © 1998 by Michael D. Clarke, used with permission. OverviewNorthrop Frye, one of the country’s most eminent thinkers, devoted his life to a study of literature and culture that was deeply rooted in the Bible. He was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, in 1912, the son of devout Methodists. Frye’s maternal grandfather was a […]
1835—1902 Copyright © 1998 by Michael D. Clarke, used with permission. OverviewGeorge Monro Grant – Principal Grant of Queen’s College as he universally came to be known – was a celebrated churchman and university administrator who is best remembered for his travel narrative Ocean to Ocean. Grant’s father, James, left his home on the Scottish […]
1918—1988 Early YearsWhen George Grant arrived at Oxford in October 1939 as the Rhodes Scholar from Queen’s University in Kingston, it was his plan to study law and to then return to Canada to work as a constitutional lawyer. Such a career would have coincided perfectly with his mother’s ambitions for him. His two grandfathers, […]
1865—1940 Copyright © 1998 by Michael D. Clarke, used with permission. OverviewEvangelical Christianity in the late nineteenth century generated a number of missionaries of “muscular Christianity,” which championed body and spirit. None was more typical and more well-known in his day than Wilfred Grenfell, missionary doctor to Labrador.“Life is a field of honour”Early Life and […]
