OBITUARY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 107, 2 November 1937, Page 9

OBITUARY

DR. C. W. GORDON ("RALFH

CONNOR")

WINNIPEG, October 31,

The death has occurred of the Rev. Dr. Charles William Gordon, C.M.G., D.D., LL.D., Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, better known under the pen-name of Ralph Connor. He visited New "Zealand early in 1935.

The. Rev. C. W. Gordon was born at Glengarry, Ontario, in 1860, and was the son of a minister who emigrated to Canada. He was educated at High School, at St. Mary's Ontario, and at Toronto University and Knox's College, Toronto: He then studied for two years in Edinburgh, He was appointed missionary to the miners and lumbermen in the Rocky Mountains in 1890 and stayed there until 1893. In 1893-94 he was representative of Canadian Western Missions for the Presbyterian Church in Britain, and in 1894 was appointed Minister of St. Stephen's Church, Winnipeg. In 1921 he was Moderator of the Presbyterian

Church of Canada. He took an active part in social service work, and was vice-president of the Social Service Council of Canada and of the British and Foreign Bible Society. In 1915 he was a chaplain to the Canadian Forces at the front. He served on a special mission to the United States for the British and Canadian Governments in 1917, and was sent by the Canadian Government to Britain in the following year. He returned to Canada in 1919, won mention in dispatches, and after the war was appointed chairman of the Council of Industry for the Province of Manitoba. He was very interested in organising the relationship between Labour and Capital. He was well known also as a novelist under the pen-name "Ralph Connor," publishing many books which he did not appear to esteem highly, but which were very popular, including "The Sky Pilot," "The Man from Glengarry," "Breaking the Record," and latterly "The Girl from Glengarry" and 'Torches Through the Bush." He was made C.M.G. in 1935, and was F.R.S., Canada, a Doctor of Divinity since 1906, and an LL.D. of Queen's University. He married. Miss Helen King, 'daughter of the principal of Manitoba College, Winnipeg, and had one son and six daughters.