author
Robert Sellar
1841–1919
A Scottish-born Canadian newspaper editor and historian, he spent decades documenting the people, politics, and local past of Quebec’s Huntingdon region. His writing blends a reporter’s eye for detail with a deep interest in how communities are shaped over time.
1 Audiobook
Gleaner Tales
by Robert Sellar
About the author
Born in Glasgow on August 1, 1841, he left school young to help support his family and came to Canada as a teenager. He learned the printing trade in Toronto, later worked in Montreal journalism, and in 1863 founded The Canadian Gleaner in Huntingdon, Quebec, a paper he would guide for much of his life.
Alongside his newspaper work, he wrote books and historical studies, including The History of the County of Huntingdon and of the Seigniories of Chateaugay and Beauharnois. His work is especially valued for preserving the local history of southwest Quebec and for recording the lives and concerns of communities that larger national histories often overlook.
He died in Huntingdon on November 29, 1919. Remembered as both an editor and an author, he left behind a detailed portrait of the region where he lived and worked, and his writing remains useful to readers interested in Canadian local history, journalism, and 19th-century public life.