Charles Mair

Charles Mair
Born	1838 September 21 Lanark, Upper Canada
Died	1927 July 7 Victoria, B.C.
Resting place	Ross Bay Cemetery, Victoria
Occupation	journalist
Language	English
Nationality	Canadian
Ethnicity	English
Citizenship	British subject
Alma mater	Queen's University
Genre	poetry
Notable works	Tecumseh
Notable awards	FRSC

Charles Mair (September 21, 1838 – July 7, 1927) was a Canadian poet and journalist. He was a fervent Canadian nationalist noted for his participation in the Canada First movement and his opposition to Louis Riel during the two in western Canada.

Mair was born at Lanark, Upper Canada, to Margaret Holmes and James Mair. He attended Queen's University but did not graduate. On leaving college, he became a journalist.

In Ottawa in 1868, Mair was introduced by civil servant and writer Henry Morgan to young lawyers George Denison, William Foster, and Robert Haliburton. "Together they organized the overtly nationalistic Canada First movement, which began as a small social group."

Mair "represented the Montreal Gazette during the first Riel Rebellion, and was imprisoned and narrowly escaped being shot by the rebels."

Mair was a Freemason

Mair "was an Officer of the Governor-General's Body Guard during the second Riel rebellion in 1885, and was later employed in the Canadian civil service in the West." He died in Victoria, British Columbia.

Mair published the first book of poetry in post-Confederation Canada, 1868's Dreamland and Other Poems. "Negligible as verse," says The Canadian Encyclopedia, "the volume gained interest when Mair escaped after being captured by Louis Riel during the Red River disturbances of 1869-70."

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB) states that Dreamland "demonstrates a conventional colonial approach to poetry. Such poems as 'August' succeed in their attention to natural detail: descriptions of the blueflies, the milkmaids, and the 'ribby-lean' cattle in parched fields anticipate the mature nature poetry of Archibald Lampman. But too often he wrote not of the timberlands he knew but of a dreamland weakly modelled upon the romantic flights of Keats." However, the book was praised by "the established poet Charles Sangster, who referred to Canada's sophisticated literary tradition as one that was habitually overlooked in the popular press."

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