(4 Dec. 1866-30 June 1946), clergyman. (G. Watt Smith) Born at Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Parents: William Smith, a crofter, and his wife Margaret Watt. He was educated at Aberdeen University and at United College in Yorkshire. On 1 Dec. 1896 he was married to Florence Kippax. (4 children) He was a clergyman at Sheffield, Leeds and Glasgow in Britain, and in 1910 came to Canada, where he was a clergyman in Ottawa and at Portage La Prairie. In 1918 he was inducted as the minister of the Presbyterian church at St. Elmo. (Cornwall Freeholder 6 June 1918) This was the famous Gordon Church, named after its first pastor, the Rev. Daniel Gordon, father of the novelist Ralph Connor (Rev. Charles W. Gordon). Queen’s University, Kingston, gave the Rev. G. Watt Smith a D. D. degree in 1924. Smith was a strong supporter of Church Union, but as the Church Union issue reached its crisis, his congregation at St. Elmo voted to remain in the Presbyterian Church. Bitterly disappointed, and resentful of the opponents of the union project, he left St. Elmo in 1925. Preparations were under way at this time to found a religious newspaper, and he was chosen to be its editor. However, the newspaper project had to be abandoned because of the illness of its promoter. Smith became a United Church clergyman at Vars, Ont., while his successor at St. Elmo was the Rev. W.B. MacCallum.

     Smith wrote a novel under the pen name John Harlaw about his experiences at St. Elmo, called Glenlyon: a Story of Scotch and Canadian Romance (1936). Clearly based on Ralph Connor’s Glengarry novels, it presents an unattractive picture of a backward and narrow-minded people. The novel lacks the emotional and ideological forcefulness of the Ralph Connor novels, but is competently written, and has valuable descriptions of social customs and traits of mind. As automobiles came in, he noticed, “The conversation changed from spavins, sidebone, colic and heaves to gasoline, carburettors, spark-plugs and batteries.” (p. 83) One of the most cutting descriptions anyone has ever penned of mean-mindedness in GC comes in his depiction of the put-upon farm mother who had two despairing ambitions for her daughter, “that she could go to domestic service in the city when she grew up, and that she should never marry.” (p. 6) The publication of this novel passed with little or no notice in GC. In fact, it is possible that it was totally unknown there. In 1975, when the novel was drawn to the attention of Elizabeth Blair, who had an unrivalled knowledge of the history of the St. Elmo area, she said she had never heard of it, and was doubtful whether it was known to the St. Elmo congregation at the time of publication.

     The Rev. G. Watt Smith left a manuscript autobiography which after his death was edited by his daughter Dr Margaret Arkinstall and published, for private distribution, under the title From the Plough to the Pulpit: a Plain Pastor’s Pathway (1947). Passages dealing with the Church Union controversy at St. Elmo were omitted from the published volume, and were destroyed afterwards with the rest of the manuscript. He wrote a religious column for the Glengarry News during his time at St. Elmo. In the Glengarry News of 2 May 1924, he published a history of the St. Elmo church, and in 1930 he published a booklet on the history of the pastoral charge of Vars. (Cornwall Standard 24 July 1930) He was also the author of the following published works: The Way to Know the Son of Man, Byways of Bible Highways, Men and Marks of the Christian Era, Sandy Gordon: Missionar [sic] : a Story of Struggle (1907), David Livingstone: the Great Heart of Africa, and a play based on the life of David Livingstone. He wrote sometimes under his own name and sometimes under the pen name of John Harlaw. He explains that he took the Harlaw name because he had been “reared on the battlefields of Harlaw” near his birthplace.

     His son Lt Douglas Smith was killed in 1918 at Vis-en-Artois in WWI. One of the Rev. G. Watt Smith’s daughters, Mary, taught school at Athol, GC, near her father’s manse. She died while a Queen’s University student, and is buried in the St. Elmo cemetery. Another daughter , Margaret (d. 2001, aged 95), became a medical doctor and was married to William Arkinstall, also a physician, whose father was an elder of the St. Elmo church. At the time of the 75th anniversary celebrations at the St. Elmo Church in July 1939, the Rev. G. Watt Smith was reported to be convalescing from a serious illness and doing ministerial work at Hearst, Ont. (Glengarry News 28 July 1939 ) The Rev. G. Watt Smith died at Kapuskasing, Ont. (children surviving him: 2) See also James Smith.

Glengarry News 5 July 1946 * From the Plough to the Pulpit, cited in these notes henceforth as autob. * private information * Morgan (1912) 1035 & 1214 * Prominent People of the Province of Ontario (1925) 220 * MacMillan, Kirk, 190, 200 (portrait) * Elizabeth Blair and Ewan Ross, The Gordon Church, St. Elmo and the Inscriptions on Its Tombstones (1972), with reprint of his 1924 history of the church * Margaret Arkinstall and Elizabeth Pearce, Pioneer Partners at St. Paul’s: Hearst, Ont. (1983) (autobiography of his daughter) * death of son Douglas : autob., Cornwall Freeholder 19 Sept. 1918, GN 20 Sept. 1918 * death of daughter Mary: autob. & Cornwall Standard 8 Feb. 1923 * receives letter from Ralph Connor, with recollections of GC, CF 4 Aug. 1921 * letter on Church Union, CS 15 March 1923 * Queen’s D.D., GN 11 April & 9 May 1924, CF 17 April 1924 * tribute to, by James Muir, from Almonte Gazette, CS 8 May 1924 (with portrait of Smith) * daughter Margaret becomes medical student University of Toronto, receives medical degree, GN 12 Sept. & 3 Oct. 1924, 3 Oct. 1930 * project of religious newspaper: autob., CS 9 April 1925, CF 23 April 1925 * leaves St. Elmo, GN 5 June 1925, CS 11 June 1925 * to Vars, GN 6 Nov. 1925 * exchange of letters between Smith and Alex MacLean, of St. Elmo, on Church Union issue, GN 12 Feb. & 9 April 1926 * to leave Vars for Craik, Sask., CS 1 May 1930 * article by G. Watt Smith on Christmas, GN 16 Dec. 1932 * death of daughter Dr Margaret, Winter GN 24 Oct. 2001