Want fewer ads?

William Wilfred Campbell ( June 1,1858 – 1 January 1918) was a Canadian poet.

Born in Newmarket, Canada West (not Berlin, present-day Kitchener, Ontario as is often recorded), the son of a clergyman, Campbell attended high school in Owen Sound. He then taught in Wiarton before enrolling the University of Toronto's University College, Wycliffe College and at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1884, Campbell married Mary Dibble and was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood the following year. He returned to Canada in 1888. After suffering a crisis of faith, he resigned from the ministry and took a civil service position in Ottawa in 1891. In 1909, he was transferred to the Dominion Archives. He had four children, Margery, Faith, Basil and Dorothy.

Campbell counted among his friends the poets Archibald Lampman and William Henry Drummond.

In 1915 he moved with his family to an old stone farmhouse on the outskirts of Ottawa, which he named "Kilmorie". He died of pneumonia on New Years morning, 1918, and is buried in the Beechwood Cemetery.