Egerton Ryerson Young

Born in April 1840 in Crosby Township, Upper Canada, he became a Methodist missionary, educator, lecturer, and author. He is best known for writing about his experiences in Manitoba and the Canadian northwest, drawing on years of work among Indigenous communities and on the expanding frontier of nineteenth-century Canada.

His books introduced many readers to northern landscapes, travel by canoe and snowshoe, and the people he met during his ministry. Titles associated with him include By Canoe and Dog-Train and other narrative works that mixed personal observation with the moral and religious outlook of his time.

He died on October 5, 1909, in Bradford, Ontario. Today, his writing is often read both as engaging historical narrative and as a record of the missionary attitudes and colonial world in which he lived.