author
Samuel Strickland
1804–1867
An early Canadian settler and memoirist, he wrote vividly about carving out a life in Upper Canada and helped preserve a firsthand picture of pioneer life. His books are especially valued for the mix of practical detail, hardship, and social history they bring to the period.
1 Audiobook
Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I)
by Samuel Strickland
About the author
Born in Suffolk, England, in 1804, Samuel Strickland emigrated to Upper Canada in 1825 and became one of the early settlers in the Peterborough and Lakefield area. He was part of the remarkable Strickland family, which also included writers Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill.
Strickland worked as a landowner, settlement official, and local public figure, but he is best remembered as an author of colonial life. His best-known work, Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West, draws on long personal experience and offers a detailed, firsthand account of farming, settlement, and community-building in nineteenth-century Canada.
He died in 1867 in Lakefield, Canada West. Today, his writing remains useful not only as memoir but also as a lively record of the challenges and routines of early settlement.