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Biography of Thomas Douglas
Name: Thomas Douglas
Birth Date: June 20, 1771
Death Date: April 8, 1820
Place of Birth: Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland
Nationality: Scottish
Gender: Male
Occupations: colonist
Thomas Douglas
Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk (1771-1820), was a Scottish colonizer in Canada. Concerned about the depressed state of the Highlands of Scotland and Ireland, he devoted much of his fortune, and his health, to establishing new communities in North America.Thomas Douglas was born in Kirkcudbrightshire on June 20, 1771, the seventh son of the 4th Earl of Selkirk. With little prospect of family support, he went to the University of Edinburgh to study law and there developed an interest in social and political affairs. In 1792, a tour of the Highlands convinced him that the lot of its people could never be improved and their only hope lay in emigration.The breakdown of the clan system and the conversion of large areas of the Highlands into sheep walks had reduced the crofters to a life of marginal existence. Douglas was even more shocked by the condition of the Irish peasantry. His concern …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…following year, the colony was attacked by the traders, with considerable loss of life on the second occasion. Selkirk arrived at Red River in 1817 and began the task of reconstruction, establishing a school and a church. His arrest of some of the traders resulted in a drawn-out trial which eventually exonerated the Nor'westers.Selkirk returned home in 1818. He died at Pau, France, on April 8, 1820. His humanitarian impulse had broken his health and consumed his fortune, but it left a warm and cherished memory in the Canadian west. Further Reading The best and probably definitive study of Selkirk is John M. Gray, Lord Selkirk of Red River (1963). Older but still useful are George Bryce, Mackenzie, Selkirk, Simpson (1905) and The Life of Lord Selkirk: Coloniser of Western Canada (1912), and Chester Martin, Lord Selkirk's Work in Canada (1916).MacEwan, Grant, Cornerstone colony: Selkirk's contribution to the Canadian West, Saskatoon, Sask.: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1977.
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