OFF-PRESS SOON: "Loyalist Refugees, Non-Military Refugess in Quebec 1776-1784"
Gavin K. Watt
Gavin was born in Toronto in 1937 and met his wife Gill Robinson in Sunday school when they were eight. They were married fourteen years later and have a family of three – two daughters and a son, all devoted historians.
When he retired as a packaging industry Sales and Marketing executive in 1989, he decided to pursue his plan for a second career – writing about Canadian military history. This was not as illogical as it might appear. In 1984 – while fathering a family, leading a sales force, heading a shooting club and a reenactment regiment – he republished Ernest Cruikshank’s regimental history of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York, adding a master roll of the 1,500 men who had served and several images of related artifacts. This effort had involved many weekend visits to the Metro Toronto Research Library and Archives Ontario and the reading of scores of source books plus the assistance of many fellow researchers.
A wonderful benefit of reenacting was Gavin’s growing friendship with American historians who were every bit as passionate about their Revolution as Gavin was about their rebellion. Their assistance, and his natural inclination, prevented his books from exhibiting the jingoistic style of so many earlier accounts.
After retirement, his engineering and business training and years of writing sales and marketing reports paid off. Research continued apace which led to a series of books that have been acknowledged as well-researched and easy to read.
Gavin is anticipating the publication of his final book -- a study of the rebellion in America’s old northwest where British influence was at its weakest. Based in Detroit, Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hamilton was given minimal resources to confront the surge of settlers encroaching on Native territories, which were nominally under his control. At the same time as the major fighting was occurring far to the east and occupying the vast majority of the rebels’ military, a few of the newly-minted States were active in the northwest and enjoying much success against the Natives and the foundering British and their loyal supporters.