Gilbert Parker was a Canadian writer and politician, who taught at the Ontario School for the Deaf and Dumb and Trinity College. After travels through Australia, the Pacific, the South Sea Islands, Europe, Egypt, and Asia, he settled in London, England, where became involved in politics and was elected to Parliament.

In London, he wrote a number of romantic novels, largely concerned with French Canadian history and culture. He said "That I understood Canada could not be established by the fact that I had spent my boyhood there, but only by the fact that some inner vision permitted me to see it as it really was."