Editor, author.
Born at Glasgow, Scotland on 20 May 1882, he was educated at Pollock and Shawlands Academies (Scotland) then came to Canada in 1908. He married Anna McNaught Johnstone in 1911. He was employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company from 1917 to 1932, serving as Editor of The Beaver, among other duties. He wrote several books, including My Brave and Gallant Gentleman (1918), The Girl of O.K. Valley (1919), Stronger Than His Sea (1920), The Spoilers of the Valley (1921), The Mad Minstrel (1923), Gordon of the Lost Lagoon (1924), and A Boy of the Great North West (1930). He then moved to British Columbia before going on to Hollywood, California where he worked in the motion picture industry. He died at Laguna Beach, California on 13 January 1948 as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident on New Year’s Eve.
Pioneers and Prominent People of Manitoba, Winnipeg: Canadian Publicity Company, 1925.
“Robert Watson novelist, dies,” Winnipeg Free Press, 15 January 1948, page 8.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 11 December 2014
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