author
Walter Bates
Best known for a vivid account of the notorious Henry More Smith, this early New Brunswick writer helped preserve one of colonial Canada's strangest true-crime stories. His life also tied writing to public service, frontier settlement, and Loyalist history.
1 Audiobook
Henry More Smith: The Mysterious Stranger
by Walter Bates
About the author
Born in Connecticut in 1760, Walter Bates became a Loyalist during the American Revolution and eventually settled in Kingston, New Brunswick. He served his community in public roles including sheriff and judge, while also building a reputation as a careful observer of local life and events.
He is remembered chiefly for writing about the criminal Henry More Smith, whose escapes and exploits fascinated readers in the early 19th century. That work gave Bates a lasting place in Canadian literary and historical writing because it preserved a dramatic, widely discussed episode from colonial New Brunswick.
Bates died in 1842, but his name still appears in histories of Loyalist settlement and early writing in the Maritimes. His appeal today lies in the way his work joins firsthand experience, regional history, and the enduring pull of a remarkable real-life tale.