Mair, Charles

Charles Mair was born in the little lumbering village of Lanark, Upper Canada in 1838. He attended Queen's University in the Faculty of Arts during 1856 and 1857 but left his studies to participate in his family's lumbering business. In the mid-1860s he began to correspond with Dr. (later Sir) John Christian Schultz who had established himself at Fort Garry in the Northwest Territories. In 1867 Mair returned to Queen's where he studied medicine for one year before joining Schultz in 1868. In 1870 Mair was taken prisoner by Riel and sentenced to be shot. He escaped and , with his wife, fled to Portage la Prairie. For the rest of the century Mair was a merchant in both Ontario and Prince Albert In 1898 he entered the service of the Immigration Department where he remained until he was superannuated in 1921. He died in Victoria in 1927.

Throughout his life Mair was also an author. He published his first volume of poetry, Dreamland, in 1868 and his most famous work, Tecumseh a drama, appeared in 1886. A published paper, The American Bison, was instrumental in causing the Canadian government to take action to preserve the species.