Ralph Connor

When World War I broke out he served as chaplain for the 43rd Cameron Highlanders unit of the British army.

In 1920 he was made chairman of the Council of Industry for Manitoba and the next year he was chosen as Moderator for the General Presbyterian Assembly of Canada.

In 1898 Gordon married Helen King, who was the daughter of a fellow clergyman, and they had seven children together.

One day in 1897 a friend who was the editor of "Westminister Magazine" asked him to write a story for the publication. It garnered so much interest that Gordon decided to expand it into a novel, and called it "Black Rock". He used the name "Ralph Connor" for the book because his editor wired him asking if he wanted to use his real name or a pseudonym, thinking that using his real name on an adventure novel might take away from his ministerial work. Gordon happened to glance at a letter he had just received, and the letterhead read "Brit. Can. Nor. West. Mission"; he liked the sound of that, so wired back, "Use Cannor". However, the telegrapher accidentally misspelled it "Connor"; his editor decided to add the name "Ralph", and "Ralph Connor" was born. That first book and subsequent ones became immensely popular in Canada, and he wrote a new one an average of once a year.

Returning to Canada, he saw a need to minister to the religious needs of the miners and loggers of the Canadian Rockies, and did that until 1893, when he was sent to England for a year.

He traveled to Scotland in 1883 and attended the University of Edinburgh for two years.

Canadian novelist "Ralph Connor" was born Charles William Gordon in Glengarry, Ontario, Canada, in 1860. His parents were from Scotland, and his father was a Presbyterian minister. When he was 10 the family moved from the almost frontier settlement of Glengarry to a more "settled" area of Ontario called Zorra, but young Charles always longed for the wilds of Glengarry--as evidenced by the fact that many of his later novels were set there. He and his brother attended the University of Toronto, and a year after graduation Charles put himself through Knox College, a divinity school.