Rev. Dr. Charles William Gordon used the pen name Ralph Connor when writing his novels in order to preserve his status as a church leader. At the beginning of the First World War, in 1915 he became Chaplain of the 43rd (Cameron Highlanders) Battalion. He later became Senior Chaplain for the Canadian forces in England and then in France. Some of his books include Black Rock, The Man from Glengarry and Glengarry School Days. The romance and color of life in Upper Canada in the decade of Confederation is captured in this novel, which tells of stouthearted yet wild Highlanders of Glengarry, the daring shantymen of Ottawa, and the forests, the farms and the streams themselves.