F. McKelvey (Frederick McKelvey) Bell

Born in Kingston, Ontario, in 1878, Frederick McKelvey Bell trained as a physician and surgeon before building a varied career as a medical officer, civil servant, and author. He served in the militia and later in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, gaining firsthand experience that shaped the books he wrote.

Bell is best known for The First Canadians in France (1917), a lively account of the first Canadian medical units in the First World War, and A Romance of the Halifax Disaster (1918), a novella inspired by the 1917 Halifax Explosion and the rescue work that followed. His writing stands out for combining practical medical knowledge with the immediacy of someone who had been there.

He died in New York City in 1931. Though not widely known today, Bell offers readers a distinctive perspective on wartime medicine, Canadian service overseas, and one of the country's most devastating disasters.