(1815-4 April 1868), clergyman. (William C. Burns) Born in Forfarshire, Scotland. In his earlier years, he travelled as an evangelist in Scotland, England and Ireland. At this time, Daniel Gordon, who was only about 7 years younger, was converted under his preaching. Burns visited Canada 1844-1846 as a deputy of the Free Church of Scotland. At this time he became acquainted with GC as a visitor. In 1846, he left Britain for China, where he served as a missionary for the remainder of his life, dying in China. A preacher of immense appeal, he seems to have deeply impressed the Free Church Presbyterians of GC. He had an incomplete, but useful, knowledge of Gaelic. He preached in French to French Canadians at a place somewhere between the present St. Elmo and St. Isidore. Burns Church at Martintown was named after him.

     He and his uncle, the Rev. Robert Burns, were important in the religious history of GC both through their immediate personal impact and because of their work in shaping Free Church Presbyterianism, so influential in GC. Moreover, the standard biographies of these men (1872, 1870: for titles, see the notes to their entries here), written by their son and brother resp., have valuable passages on GC illustrating both the religious history and the conditions of pioneer life. The importance of the 2 men and the biographies in GC history is indicated by many notices in the Rev. Donald MacMillan’s history of The Kirk in Glengarry, where some of the best passages from the aforementioned biographies are quoted. Again, the Burns men are essential to an understanding of the origin and ideas (the religious “genealogy”) of the Glengarry novels of “Ralph Connor” (C.W. Gordon).

Life in DNB & (with portrait) ODict * Islay Burns, Memoir of the Rev. Wm. C. Burns (London, Eng., 1870); see Chapter X for Glengarry County.