Egerton Ryerson

Egerton Ryerson (1803–1882) was a Canadian Methodist minister, educator and controversialist. The son of a Loyalist who had settled in Upper Canada, he became a circuit preacher, the founding editor of the Christian Guardian and the first principal of Victoria College. As chief superintendent of education for Upper Canada from 1844 to 1876, he built the free public school system of what became Ontario. He was a combative writer on church and state. In retirement he published The Loyalists of America and Their Times (1880), a defense of his father's generation, and an autobiography, The Story of My Life.