The childhood influences that moulded William Dawson were typical of the homes of the early Scottish pioneers in the Maritime Provinces of Canada at the beginning of the last century. They were characterised by simplicity, by frugality and by reverence. They were founded on an unwavering belief in religion and education and honest labour as necessary to the development of the individual and the nation. They were based on principles inculcated in the youth of these early Canadian days long before Carlyle with rugged pen and organ tone declared them. Later, when Principal of McGill, Dr. Dawson used to speak with affectionate remembrance of the agencies which fashioned him in the little seacoast town of black wharves, and tossing tides, and far-come sailing ships bearing mysterious cargoes from unknown and romantic lands, and manned by strangely-garbed and bearded seamen speaking a foreign tongue. "Our home," he said, "was a very quiet one except when strangers, especially men engaged in missionary and benevolent enterprises, were occasionally invited as guests. To some of these I was indebted for much information and guidance ... There was always much work and study in the winter evenings, and I remember with what pleasure I used to listen to my father's reading, chiefly in history and biography, for the benefit of my mother when busy with her needle, as well as of my brother and myself, after our lessons were finished.... My early home had much in it to foster studies of nature, and both my parents encouraged such pursuits. A somewhat wild garden, with many trees and shrubs, was full of objects of interest; within easy walking distance were rough pastures, with second-growth woods, bogs, and swamps, rich in berries and flowers in their season, and inhabited by a great variety of birds and insects. Nothing pleased my father more than to take an early morning hour, or rare holiday, and wander through such places with his boys, studying and collecting their treasures. The harbour of Pictou, too, with its narrow entrance from the sea, affords ample opportunities for such investigations, and its waters teem with fish: from the gay striped bass and lordly salmon to the ever-hungry smelt--the delight of juvenile anglers. In such a basin, visited every day by the ocean tides, there is an endless variety of the humbler forms of aquatic life, and along the streams entering it a wealth of curious animals and plants with which an inquisitive boy could easily make himself familiar in his rambles and occasional angling expeditions." It was here that the interest of the future scientist was first aroused in natural history. Of his mother he wrote: "She was a woman of deep affections and many sorrows ... her girlish years had been saddened by the death of her parents, and by the mournful breaking up of her old home ... She had a few warm and attached friends, and was very kind to such of the needy as she could help."